


Dark is the Knight

by Canis_cosmos



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Hannibal (TV)
Genre: (apparently), Alfred should loosen up, Batman AU, Blood Kink, Dark Batman, Dark Will Graham, HanniBat, Hannibal Lecter is Batman, M/M, Modern Day Myths and Legends, The Joker is the Joker, Wendigo Will Graham, everyone is fucked up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:34:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 40,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26671495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canis_cosmos/pseuds/Canis_cosmos
Summary: The papers call him Gotham’s Dark Knight. The criminals call him The Arkham Ripper...Batman doesn’t have his ‘no kill’ rule in this one folks.- - -Batman/Hannibal has designs on Will. The Joker has designs on Batman. Will is too porous for this, and may regret ever coming to Gotham.- - -This is going to be about ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ chapters, give or take...
Relationships: Hannibal Lecter/Joker (DCU), Joker (DCU)/Batman, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Joker (DCU)
Comments: 38
Kudos: 79





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you have fun reading this, I know I had a great time writing it!
> 
> There's a little pic of Mads as Batman halfway down, just to help you visualise ;)

Night hung in an obscuring cape over Gotham, and the diseased city tried to light it from beneath; a mentally ill inpatient hiding under the blankets with a flashlight.

Hannibal dug the tips of his armoured gloves into the concrete lip of his vantage point, wondering if Arkham Asylum should be expanded to include the whole city-state; but who would staff such an institute? He wouldn’t leave the city to the ministrations of Chilton. Frederick Chilton belonged in the asylum, just not at its helm. There were some who argued Batman should be in that institute, but those same people had begged Hannibal to run it in Chilton’s place, their opinions cancelling each other out, adding up to nothing.

Wind gusted from the East, carrying the brine of the sea and catching his cloak to pull it rippling to his left side. The idea of using a sigil, The Bat, had sound psychology behind it. If he had felt a little ridiculous the first time he trialled it, the savage satisfaction at his first quarry’s unbridled terror quickly eclipsed it.

Some nights Hannibal would stay in the Lector manor unless alerted to a disturbance; other night, the hunt would call him and he saw no reason to refuse. This corner of the city, where Upper Gotham Proper, Little Italy, and the East End converged, often provided promising trails.

Sure enough, an elder gentleman with a cane and dignified limp picked up a tail and Hannibal allowed himself an anticipatory baring of his teeth.

The next building over was lower than his present position, so he sent an electric current through his cape. The fabric immediately ran taut and rigid; he leaned into the wind and swept across to the other rooftop, releasing the current as he landed, rolling to take the speed out of the landing. Even after twelve years, stalking through his city in this way still filled his chest with jubilant buoyancy and primal bloodlust.

There was little enough intellectual stimulation these days to call forth that jubilation.

Hannibal could read the would-be-mugger’s body language even from this angle, and calculated the site of the attack before the intended victim had become aware of the shade behind him.

He fired a grapple across the alley, and waited for the mugger to initiate.

“Hold it gramps.”

“Ay? Who’s there?”

“Wallet, watch, finger jewellery, I want it all.”

“Now… now wait a minute.” The old man staggered back as the aggressor marched forward without slowing, blade in hand.

The way he licked his lips as he advanced broadcast his intentions to Hannibal. He leapt into empty air, the line of the grapple swinging him over the path of the assailant, and he retracted the barbs and let the line recoil dropping the last few meters with a brief flare of his cape to slow his descent. He landed between the two men in a crouch, a curved blade in one hand as he stood straight again. The mugger choked in surprise and took a step back, his instincts serving him well.

Unfortunately, pride overrode self-preservation, and he stood his ground.

“The… the Batman.” He stammered, fighting to control his voice.

“And who might you be?”

The criminal blinked rapid-fire, confusion warring with fear, aggression trumping both. “The fuck do you-”

The Bat took two steps forward in a confusing flurry of his cape and seized the man’s wrist as he reflexively brought up his weapon.

Hannibal twisted the arm, his hindbrain calculating the precise angle and force required to dislocate the elbow. The man opened his mouth to shout but the sickle blade drove point first into his throat and ripped down his sternum before the scream had gathered any force. The ragged punch of tainted air informed Hannibal’s nose of an underlying metabolic condition, Gaucher disease, so Hannibal changed the angle of the blade and cut in under his rips, mindless of rupturing the organs inside. He would not be eating this one.

When the man had fallen to a bloody heap on the floor at his feet, Batman turned to inspect the older man whom he had ‘saved’. As their eyes met, the man fell to his knees.

“P-please.” He croaked.

Batman closed the difference between them with the dancers grace that so few expected of his broad frame. The cape made his movements look ethereal – one of its less practical but no less effective purposes.

He placed a single finger under the man’s chin and lifted it to meet his gaze.

“And who might you be?”

“N-no one, I’m no one.”

Batman cocked his head. A better answer than the dead man’s, but not satisfying.

“Come now, you can do better than that.”

“D-David.”

“Very good David. Is there anything you would like to say to me?”

“P-please don’t kill me.”

Hannibal sighed. He would have preferred a thank you, but a please was in the same vein, he supposed. He leaned forward slightly and smelled the man. Nothing incriminating lingered under the bitter musk of fear and the stink of tobacco. “Very well.”

He unhooked the grapple gun again and fired it up and into the wall of the closest building. When its burrs impaled brick he retracted the line and it pulled him up.

Approaching the zenith of his trajectory, he retracted the barbs and fired upwards again, and again, building momentum and soaring higher, until he broke the tops of the buildings and exploded up into the night air above the city.

Jolting the cape into wings again, he glided for a while, searching for another spot to take watch from. The night was still young, and he had yet to collect any trophies.

Crouched on a fire escape in the shadows on one side of the alley, a dark shape watched the shaking old man climb to his feet. The survivor clutched his walking stick like a lifeline, eyes on the strip of visible sky, in case the night terror returned. The hidden creature watched the man approach his fallen attacker and then quickly step back again as he registered the mangled throat and torso. With a hand to his mouth, he hurried from the side street.

Few creatures could move silently on these corroded metal stairs, but this one could. An inky blue-black shadow separated from the others, and lowered itself in rapid succession until it could drop to the floor. Slouching almost casually toward the deceased, the raised jagged black band around its head gleamed dully, reflecting shattered facets of the low light.

Pausing just outside of the dark pool of blood, it crouched over the victim, and stretched its mouth into a sharp grin.

\- - -

\- - -

“I truly am sorry sir.” The septuagenarian sighed, and Hannibal hated the quaver that now resided in his old friend’s voice. “I would expect the old girl to have another ten years in her at least, but they don’t build them to last these days, even at the extortionate prices they charge.”

“It’s quite alright Alfred. At least it is the central unit, and we don’t have to uproot an entire wing of the mansion to get at it.”

“Just so sir. I will call Mr Price and see when he can fit us in. Cold showers used to do the trick in my military days, but I don’t suppose either of us fancies that now, do we?”

“Mr Price who re-did the kitchens?”

“Yes sir, you approved of his work I remember?”

A background worry in Hannibal was comforted that Alfred’s memory still rung crystal clear. “Yes. A courteous man.”

Alfred nodded, one of his tight smiles on his face.

Hannibal walked smartly away, discomforted by the specific odour of Alfred’s disapproval. “If he can’t fix it today, I shall take us to the country club. We can shower there.”

Mr Price turned up at three in the afternoon with his new apprentice in tow. They wore light tan overalls, clean and pressed, embroidered with their names, and simple baseball caps of the same tan colour. The cases they carried opened into organised compartments of polished tools. Hannibal found them standing with Alfred by the industrial sized boiler in the brightly lit basement.

A particularly malignant aftershave assaulted his olfactory senses as he approached the men on silent feet. He willed himself to tune it out and waited for a natural break in the conversation before announcing himself.

“A pleasure to see you again Mr Price.”

“Doctor Lecter, hello!” The skinny man jumped and turned around. His younger colleague looked around with languidly feigned surprise. Hannibal met his eyes before returning his attention to Mr Price, a prickle crossing the base of his skull.

“I must thank you for fitting us in on such short notice.” He returned his gaze to the unfamiliar face, tilted down now, his cap’s brim hiding his eyes. “And who might you be?”

The mouth, bracketed in dark stubble, curled up at the corners.

“Will Graham.” His voice was soft, but he spoke clearly. “Pleasure to meet you.”

Hannibal extended his hand. It was met by a dry calloused palm, smooth at the back where it met Hannibal’s thumb. The handshake was firm but the gaze remained averted. A chord of discontent strummed in Hannibal’s chest; polite by numbers, but not by nuance. Yet that fleeting eye contact warranted further study.

Swallowing his ire, he returned his attention to the senior partner.

“My apprentice.” Price supplied.

“I see. Has Alfred filled you in?”

“Yessir. We’re just about to take the casing off and have a look-see.”

“Too early for a full prognosis then.”

“Yessir, but we’ll do our best to get it fixed up quick as we can.”

“Let me know if there’s anything you need.” His eyes slid to the apprentice, whose smirk had only marginally relaxed.

In the Bat-Suit, with the cowl, he would have narrowed his eyes, maybe even loosed a low growl. In his Human-Suit, he kept his gaze light, flitted it to meet Alfred’s eyes, noted his subtle anxiety, and took his leave.

He discovered the apprentice in the library not twenty minutes later. Hannibal entered and shut the doors silently behind him.

“Mr Graham.”

Graham looked up from the book he perused, smiled vaguely, and snapped it shut.

“Doctor Lecter.” He matched Hannibal tone for tone, meeting his eyes again for the briefest of moments before the beak of his cap lowered. He felt the gaze on his chin; better than the floor, but still vexing.

“Does Mr Price not require your assistance?”

“It’s a single component issue. He prefers to do the fiddly work for our more important clients.”

“Then you are superfluous to the task?”

“He’s training me to identify problems. Fixing them is easy.”

Hannibal took a step closer, eyeing the hang of his overalls to check for sign of light-fingered acquisitions; though the garment was loose enough that it draped in an unflattering and obscuring way around the man’s frame.

While not supremely fond of strangers wondering uninvited in his home, he could appreciate the lure of books. The volume cupped in the apprentice’s hand was a book of French poetry, he raised an eyebrow at the interloper.

“You speak French?”

“I like to read it, anyway.”

“Tu ne parles pas?”

“ ‘Tu’ not ‘vous’ Doctor? You don’t see us as equals?”

Hannibal arranged the mask of his person suit to form an expression of patient amusement, assuming the apprentice could see enough of his face beneath his blinkers. “I would discourage the use of the formal address in return, I prefer not to stand on ceremony.”

“Is that right, _sir?”_

“Your Mr Price makes an effort with his own particular brand of courtesy, as do I. Do you have a brand of courtesy?” More of a chance than he gave most malcontents.

Graham stood up straighter, unchastened. “I do, as it happens.” He canted his head, a corner of one eye peeking out below the cap’s shadow. “But I built it on standards that withstood my own reckoning, not those pushed upon me by others.”

A flush of interest crept up under Hannibal’s human mask, salving his irritation.

“Is that so?”

“It is.” He checked for the time on a wrist that had no watch. “Well, I’d better get back to Jimmy. But, may I borrow this?” He held up the book.

Hannibal reached for the little volume and checked the colophon. A first edition, a hundred and forty years old, the leather binding was in excellent condition, the rough-cut page edges only lightly foxed. He checked the inner board to see his grandmother’s name finely inscribed in the corner in faded purple ink.

He handed it back to Graham. “A gift.”

Surprise brought the man’s head up, gratifying Hannibal with the first genuine expression of their brief acquaintanceship. The apprentice had asked to be denied, an attempt to put lie to the idea they were equals. His sudden discomfort originated in some deeper place, the entrance of a cave system briefly visible – and Hannibal wanted to go spelunking.

Graham’s eyes ducked away again, and he licked his lower lip nervously. “Thank you.” Quiet, clear, sincere. Hannibal nodded in approval, but made the decision to shine a light into the fissure.

“Not fond of eye-contact, are you?”

The apprentice stiffened, spoke to Hannibal’s chest instead of his chin, some bite in his voice. “Eyes are distracting. You see too much. You don’t see enough...” He paused, and some of his former reserve flowed back into him. Hannibal watched the muscles loosen and the distant smile return to the downturned face. “I’ll be getting back to Jimmy then.”

He began to walk toward the door and Hannibal made no move to stop him, or to move out of his way. As Will navigated passed with the faintest brush against his shirt sleeve, the cloying aftershave tickled at Hannibal’s nose, reminding him not to sample this curiosity too deeply.

He walked to the windows and opened them all.

When the workmen left, Alfred found Hannibal still in the library, watching the van as it rumbled away down the drive.

“Were they successful?” Hannibal asked, hearing Alfred come up behind him.

“Yes sir. You can, once again, shower at your convenience.”

A soft sigh slipped between Hannibal’s lips. He and Alfred had spoken on a few occasions about his insistence on addressing him as ‘sir’. Prior to earning his doctorate, he had endured ‘Master Lecter’ for the majority of his young life. ‘Sir’ was as informal as Alfred would get, despite their long history. It hadn’t bothered him in decades, but that apprentice…

“I’m rather glad you let young him leave, sir.” Alfred added, as though privy to Hannibal’s inner monologue.

“The apprentice?”

Alfred nodded. “I sensed you felt his manners weren’t up to par.”

“It would have been remarkably unsubtle to ‘disappear’ him here.”

“Do you intend to trace him and…” The distaste in Alfred’s tone effectively communicated the rest of the sentence.

“On the contrary. I gifted him with a book.”

Alfred appeared nonplussed. “Very good, sir.” A pause. “Which book?”

 _“Sagesse,_ Paul Verlaine.”

“ ‘Wisdom’, poetry on the theme of maturation, if I recall?”

“As ever, your memory serves you valiantly Alfred.”

“I was tasked with your education. Are you taking his upon yourself?”

Hannibal raised an eyebrow and one corner of his lips. “While the book itself could probably fetch enough on the open market to fund a semester of college fees, I estimate Mr Graham to be in his thirties. Late to be an apprentice perhaps, but I believe he already has some education, and a natural curiosity. I found him in here, he selected the book himself.”

Alfred startled. “He was wondering unsupervised?” The ‘ _and you let him live_?’ a silent spectre between them.

Hannibal placed a hand on the old man’s shoulder. He really did worry about poor Alfred’s blood pressure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know if you enjoyed! It's all planned out, the next 4 chapters are already written, and let me tell you, writing the Joker is the best fun!
> 
> Kudos turn the Bat-Signal on, comments drive the Batcycle!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll generally be posting updates weekly, but I thought I should introduce the Wendigo sooner rather than later!

[Here's the map of Gotham I've been using, if it's of any interest!]

**Chapter 2**

Keeping to Gotham’s rooftops had many advantages, not least of all the breeze that washed away the unsavoury waste and refuse smells that wafted up from the backed-up city sewers. But even the lofty heights of the cityscape couldn’t spare him when the wind blew from North-North-West; the city was riddled with disease, and the D’Angelo Sewage Treatment Plant was its halitosis.

Tonight was one such night, the wind cold and rank. Hannibal perched on the broad masonry lip of the Coventry Cathedral and thought of Italy. The canals of Venice sweated a mellifluous odour in high summer, but history, art and architecture could at least compensate. Gotham City had very little to offer, except criminals and lunatics.

He did his best to contribute to the art history of Gotham, using the abundant natural materials, but his tableaus were yet to be recognised as such. 

He understood Police Commissioner Crawford’s position on the matter. Even with Batman’s assistance, crime rates still exceeded those of any other city in the US. They always had. The Gotham City Police Department would dedicate zero man power to pursuing a man who (predominantly) targeted the bad-guys.

The papers toed the line for once, and labelled Batman ‘Gotham’s Dark Knight’, while the criminals called him ‘The Arkham Ripper’.

The Greek heroes went by many names; Hannibal found accumulating them equitable to collecting accolades.

A white van pulled into view, parking at the back doors to the morgue. Hannibal engaged his comms.

“The body-snatchers are at the morgue again. I’m about to engage.”

‘ _Be careful sir.’  
_

Doors were flung open, and hooded thugs piled out of the back, sporting shotguns.

Hannibal leaned forward and prepared to drop.

“I’d hold on a minute, if I were you.” The voice was low and calm and _close._

He palmed the curved blade as he lowered his stance and spun round into a crouch. The shadow danced away with placating hands. Unlike most of the lunatics he had met, this one didn’t take its first opportunity to loose a laugh at his surprise, although he did huff an amused breath as he jumped partway up the curved dome of the roof and stuck there in spite of physics.

“And why is that?”

Another Mask in his city; how tedious. Difficult to make out the trappings on this one’s costume; blue-black where his was grey-black. The profile of his head was broken by something that resembled a crown of thorns. Vigilante or villain?

Hannibal glanced down behind him, where the van still waited for its passengers.

“They’ve been busier than usual. Think they’ve got a new client.”

“Your interest in this?”

“Using the little fish to find the big fish.”

“Am I your bigger fish?”

Here the dark figure did laugh, but it was a low throaty sound, much less abrasive than some other madmen he’d encountered.

“I’ve already learned your design. No, I’m hunting something altogether different.”

This did give Hannibal pause. The creature claimed to understand him? An arrogant and intriguing statement, as provocative as it was offensive.

He fired his grapple gun into the dome above and to the left of the mocking creature, running to the right as it pulled him up, so he could intercept the fleet figure as he tried to leap away. He caught him by his throat and slammed him against the dome wall, hooking the grapple to his belt and caging the slimmer man against the oxidized copper cladding with his arms.

Facilitated by the man’s costume, which appeared to grip the convex surface by itself, Hannibal did not have to support both their weights and could run the back of one gloved hand down the front of the man’s suit. His Teflon coated armour slid over the material without resistance.

“A Van der Waals suit? Very smart, I believe this work is a few years ahead of the Autumn Labs.”

He peered at the man’s mask and headpiece. The mask, sitting above clean-shaven cheeks, had the aspect of shattered black glass, and above it rested a crown of antlers, not thorns, curved up and back to shield the dome of his skull. The tips were as sharp as thorns; a good offence in his defence.

If the man were to head-but him now, it wouldn’t penetrate his cowl, but could easily scar his jaw. The man appeared calm however, readily meeting his gaze.

“And who might you be?” As Hannibal asked his question, amusement shone from eyes as blue-black as his costume.

“A shadow, suspended on dust. Another spectre in the world of men, seeing but unseen. There’s a power in names ‘Batman’; I’ll willingly give you mine - if you will reveal your own?”

Hannibal bared his teeth in a display half-between a smirk and a snarl.

“Then what should I call you?”

“Wendigo, if it pleases you to call me something.”

Batman rumbled at the impertinence beneath the phrasing, then the myth of the wendigo slid home and his breath caught. _Cannibalism_.

He inhaled deeply, briefly nosing the air around the man’s ears and neck. Home made soap with pine resin extract, a meat rich diet, some metabolised alcohol – likely from yesterday – and the scent of exertion, but no fear sweat.

He released the costumed man and slid back to the stone ledge beneath the dome. The Wendigo brushed himself off exaggeratedly and climbed down like the gecko he modelled his suit after.

A tinny rattling noise echoed up between the buildings, accompanied by muffled shouting. Keeping the unknown quantity at the edge of his vision, Hannibal stepped to the edge and looked down to where the Snatchers were wheeling their cargo out on gurneys.

If he were to jump down now he could kill them all and return the cadavers to their families to be buried properly.

“How certain are you that this will lead to a bigger catch?”

But the shadow in his peripheral vision was only a dark piece of night sky, and the Wendigo had already crawled half way down the Cathedral. Two thirds of the way down, he produced a whip that had been coiled on his back, snapped it around a streetlight, and swung out onto the roof of the van, timing it so he landed as the back doors slammed shut.

The man tugged his whip free, coiled it and clipped it to his back, then made himself comfortable and looked up. He gave Batman a little wave, and the van took off.

Instead of the chafing resentment he felt when his plans (infrequently) went awry, Hannibal found himself fighting off a smile. He fired his grapple up at the spire on the dome’s cap and balanced at its highest point, watching the van negotiate towards Arkham Island. He stiffened his cape and leapt out into the ether, toward the Southern Channel.

Sadly he was flying into the foul smelling wind, but with the more direct route, he reached the bridge before the white van. He reared vertically in the air to stall and slow his speed, then grappled to the top of the cantilever truss.

The Wendigo’s dark shape on the top of the white van made it an easy mark, but following it across Arkham Island would be difficult with the lower slung and more distributed buildings.

As the vehicle approached his location he swooped low over the bridge and cast a sharpened baterang into the shoulder of the van. The Wendigo looked up sharply, and Batman saw a flash of teeth before his glide carried him away.

Crouching on the suspended span over the midway point of the bridge, Batman called Alfred.

‘ _Are you quite alright sir?’  
_

“I’m fine Alfred, the altercation has yet to happen. I’ve met a new player, and am in pursuit of both targets.”

‘ _Ah yes, I see one of the homing beacons has activated.’  
_

“Keep an eye on it for me, will you? There’s a chance it might get dislodged. I’m calling the bike, if the signal vanishes, I need to know where and following what trajectory. Feed that to the computer and pull up likely destinations.”

‘ _Of course sir. I will keep you updated.’  
_

Hannibal’s fingers were already recalling his motorbike through the autonomous functions, and he pondered this new player’s motives while he waited for it to arrive. By the time it pulled up in the lane below, he had determined that more information was required to reach a verdict, and the prospect of gathering intelligence on this new potential ally or foe held an appeal that had long been absent in his dealings with the masked madmen of the city.

‘ _The van has continued over to Otisburg, its bearing has it moving towards the Narrows.’  
_

“Thank you Alfred.”

He dropped to the road and mounted his bike and, taking manual control, steered out into the flow of traffic, speeding over this bridge and the next.

“I’ve reached Otisburg, where is the vehicle now?”

_‘Still in the Narrows sir, passing Toxic Acres. I would hazard a guess that it’s heading towards Amusement Mile.’  
_

The Joker’s old territory had been left mostly unclaimed by organised crime and city developers, too many booby-traps had claimed curious lives. If a new crime boss had chosen to set up shop in the area, then they were either very thorough or very reckless. Neither bode well.

‘ _As I thought sir, they’ve crossed into Amusement Mile and are heading to the shoreline.’  
_

It crossed his mind again that perhaps this Wendigo was orchestrating the Body Snatchers, and had only engaged Batman in conversation to delay the slaughter of his people. A possibility, and if true, the continued operation of the homing device would suggest that he was being led into a trap.

Trap or not, his piqued curiosity would hardly allow him to disengage now.

‘ _The vehicle has come to a stop at the old ‘Funland’.’  
_

Hannibal’s stomach muscles tightened.

_‘Sir, I have my reservations about you following there.’  
_

“I am hardly delighted at the prospect myself Alfred.”

Reaching an abandon factory just south of Funland, Hannibal instructed the bike to wait on the outskirts of Amusement Mile and climbed to the top of the building. From the vantage point he could see the white van, its roof once again the solid rectangle of white without its extravehicular passenger.

The batarang, too, was missing.

“Alfred, would you be so kind as to give me the current coordinates of the homing device?”

‘ _Certainly, sir. The beacon is now… within Funland itself. Difficult to tell what elevation, but the signal is coming from the North-West-West corner of the building.’  
_

“I see. Can you pull up the old blueprints of the complex? They should still be on file.”

‘ _Sir, if I may enquire, is this a reconnaissance mission, or are you planning to engage this evening?’  
_

“I suppose that depends on what I find.”

A beat, where Alfred presumably sighed out his discontent before reengaging comms, ‘ _Very good, sir.’  
_

Hannibal launched himself to the top of the Funland building, landing on the raised edge of the flat roof and wondering how many of the Joker’s old traps still lay unsprung. A close range scan of the area for electronics only picked up the homing beacon, his batarang, embedded in the curved vent on the Northwest corner.

He plucked it from the coated aluminium and turned off the transmitter. The edges still appeared relatively sharp; he tucked it into his belt and considered the wide maw of the horn-shaped vent. It would take his broad shoulders, but only just. Apparently the Wendigo wished to encourage him to use this entrance.

“Have you found those blueprints Alfred?”

‘ _Yes sir. And the homing beacon has been deactivated.’  
_

“I have it, it was on the roof. There is a vent in the same location where the beacon last transmitted, can you tell me where it leads?”

‘ _One moment sir_.’ Hannibal heard Alfred typing as he posed his next question. ‘ _What was the device doing on the roof?’  
_

“A rather unsubtle breadcrumb from this new player, I believe.”

_‘This new player, are they a hostile or a friendly?’  
_

“A little too soon to tell. Perhaps a little of both.”

_‘I see. The vent goes straight to the lowest levels of the building, with branches of ducts leading out every other floor.’  
_

Hannibal considered his options, if the Wendigo wished Batman to find him, he would presumably have left further clues within the duct system – however, it would leave him far too vulnerable.

He allowed his gaze to rove the cracked cement of the roof, the clumps of weeds that had started to colonise the abandoned building. He peered over the wall to the dark expanse of water far below, that slapped against the cliff.

“The other vents on the roof, do they connect to the same system?”

‘ _Yes sir, all the vents lead to the basement. This one’s sister vent is on the South-South-East corner of the building, the two occupying the remaining two corners have their ducts on the alternate floors.’  
_

“Thank you Alfred. I think I will start with the sister vent.”

Batman fit the grapple barbs around the lower lip of the vent, gripped the upper lip, and slid in feet first.

\- - -

The Wendigo crouched on his haunches in the air duct, keeping one eye on the staging area where the bodies were being presented, and the other on the vent shaft where he hoped Batman would emerge. The large room below had cement walls and floor, little enough of which was visible through the half-dismantled carnival gear stacked against the walls.

The Body Snatchers had been met by a large ebullient man in a nurse’s outfit, who emitted frequent high-pitched giggles at infrequent intervals, often without obvious cause. The Wendigo’s teeth ached with the sound; he wondered if it would be possible to remove his vocal chords without killing him. If so, he would like to strangle the man with them.

“They’re embalmed already, yes?” The ‘nurse’ tittered, with a cautionary sharpness in the cant of his eyebrows.

“Y-yes, we only took the prepped ones.”

“Good. Good. Heeheheehee, that’s good. I don’t enjoy the process, it’s so much less fun when they’re already dead. Hmhmmhm. Alright, you can take them to the lacquer tanks.”

“Right away boss.”

“No, no, no, I’m not The Boss.” The fat man giggled, with a flap of his hand. “Silly.”

“Uh, right. ‘Course.”

The wheels squeaked as the gurneys rolled away. “Good boys.” The nurse cooed, jowls wobbling with sinister encouragement. The man watched the thieves take the corpses through to another room, and then he pirouetted with surprising grace and minced to a short set of steps leading to a separate antechamber. 

The doors closed behind him and the Wendigo readied himself to follow through the vents, when a warm breath tickled the hairs against the back of his neck, and he froze.

“How goes the fishing trip?” A low voice enquired behind him.

The Wendigo found himself smiling, despite the arm curled around his side, and the crescent blade resting loosely against his abdomen. He thought briefly of a velociraptor claw.

“Promising so far: I’m about to follow the pilot fish, if you’d care to join?”

“I’m not looking for a partner.”

The Wendigo sighed winsomely and turned his head slightly. “They say that’s when you’re most likely to find one.”

He felt the tip of the blade press tighter against his suit. “ ‘They’ speak a great deal of drivel.”

Letting out a breathy laugh, the Wendigo shrugged slightly. “I thought you might appreciate riding along on this one. I suspect you might run into an old friend.”

The arm around him tensed briefly, and withdrew without cutting into him. He let out a silent breath, before twisting around to look at the hunched shadow behind him.

“What do you know?”

“I don’t _know_ anything. But if we follow the pilot fish, you can ask the shark.”

Batman growled in displeasure, but indicated the Wendigo should lead the way. 

“Watch your ears.” The Wendigo patronized with a wink, and turned back to crawl away down the vent, keeping his own head lowered to accommodate the curved-back antlers.

Negotiating the ducts with Batman behind him brought a blush creeping up his neck, and he smirked at his own embarrassment. Apparently crawling on your hands and knees without waving your hips was a practical impossibility. The form-fitting suit provided some regions of protective cladding, but nothing in the way of the fancy embellishments so many Masks opted for; for the first time he wished he had a cape.

Forcing himself to concentrate more on being silent with his movements than concerned about presenting his derrière to the Batman, he followed the duct over the staging area into the room beyond.

The duct split and turned away, beginning a curving trajectory that angled out of view. He stopped by one of the grates and peered out, moving to one side to share the panorama.

“Oh gods.”

The room below may have once been a circus ring. Unlike the staging area, this area was spotlessly clean and had clearly only recently been redecorated. The ring was now a gleaming dance-floor, tiled in large black and white squares like a chessboard. The former seating area now housed long banquet tables, their white table clothes covered with elaborate dishes that glistened unnaturally, and smaller cocktail tables. The walls had been freshly plastered, ornate chandeliers and multi-coloured streamers hung from the ceiling another floor above.

Everything was so shiny and artificial, it was like looking at a picture. Especially considering, the frozen waltz arranged across one half of the dance floor. The varnished dancers: the vanished deceased.

A voice broke through the stillness. “Mr J? Oh Mistah Ja-ay?”

Beside him, Batman clenched his jaw and lifted his upper lip. Quietly, so quietly that if he hadn’t seen his lips move, the Wendigo might have missed it, he whispered, “No”.

The nurse from before threw a set of doors open and waddled back into the room with his hands on his hips. “Where are you Mr J?”

“That, is not Harley Quinn.” The soft voice beside him sounded the slightest bit relieved.

The balcony to one side, where the band might have played, had its curtain tossed aside, and a skeletal figure stepped into the light. He wore a bright purple three-piece suit, his face was covered in thick white paint, and his dishevelled hair was stained green. Batman went rigid.

“Whaat? Whaat? Can’t I have just a little _peace_ while I’m writing my invitations?”

“Mistah Ja-ay, you’ve only got one invitation to write, and you’ve been writing it for _days_.”

“Words are important Harley. Words are _important.”_ The clown gestured expansively. “Units of thought: each phone, each _syllable_ holds a nuance and a clue, a lure and a barb, a meaning – sometimes two, three, four, five meanings. _Layered_ meanings. And our guest of honour likes to skin words right back to the bone, examine every dermal layer. We must pick the right words Harley, _I must_ pick the right words.”

“Okay Mr J, but I thought you might want to know, some new guests have arrived, they’re being washed and dressed as we speak.”

“Oh goodie!” Mr J, who could only be the Joker, clapped his white-gloved hands together and rubbed them with relish. “How many?” The fingers wiggled, eager to count.

“Three.”

“Three? Three!” The hands became trembling fists at his side. “One of them’s going to be dancing alone! We can’t have that, everyone has to be having the _best time_! No wall flowers!”

The Joker disappeared back behind the curtain. Harley, stayed where he was, twisting the fabric of his nurse’s scrubs and twisting one foot on the ground like a bashful child.

The Wendigo leaned into Batman’s shoulder, and muttered with feigned confusion. “I thought you killed the Joker.”

“So did I.” Came the growled response.

“I guess you should have eaten him. Just to be sure.”

Batman snapped his head round and narrowed his eyes, but his words were calm and measured. “Would you eat that kind of crazy?”

Smiling into the icy glare, the Wendigo shrugged, and then the Joker erupted into the ballroom below.

“…two-step, not because you take two steps - you take lots of steps - but because there are two of you. You can’t ride a bicycle with only one wheel, no, that’s a unicycle; you can’t dance the two-step with one person, so what are we going to do with a spare wheel, hummmm?”

By the time he finished speaking, he had crossed the distance between the door and his quivering nurse, and gripped the larger man by his lapels, pulling him to his toes with hidden wiry strength.

“Y-you could have them talking around a table, there’s no one en-enjoying a cocktail yet. Or… or we can leave her in the tank until we find her a suitable… dance partner.”

The Joker’s face broke into a grin, a grin that got wider and wider until it seemed his face might split in half.

“Aaaah hah! Yes. Yes, what’s a good ball without a little _romance_ , a little _drama_. Hahahaha, haha, hahahahaa.” He released Harley and spun away to do a little shimmy to a tune only he could hear.

“Matchmaking! We will bring two dearly-departeds together and they can find love in the hereafter, oh what happy ghosties they’ll be! Hahahah, hahahaha…” The laughter rolled on and on, while Harley looked on with a sick smile and an unconvincing titter. By the time the Joker was on his back with tears streaming down his face, the nurse had forgotten his fear and joined in with deep belly laughs.

“I’ve seen enough.” The Wendigo muttered, backing up down the shaft, to give Batman exclusive access to the vent grill. He moved to get a better picture of the full room and then turned his face to look at the Wendigo.

“So.” Came the low voice. “You have found your shark. How do you plan to reel him in?”

“Why, with the right bait, of course.” Bracing his weight on his hands, he kicked forward from his crouch, hitting Batman with both feet, and driving him through the grill.

He heard the metallic clank of the grill hitting the ground, but not the corresponding thump of the body. Scooting forward to look out of the empty square, he saw Batman had landed gracefully with his cloak only now relaxing to the ground from its locked-wing position. He cast a murderous glare up at the vent shaft, before the Joker shattered the stunned silence with a horrified cry, “Nnnnoooooooooooooo!”

Still lying on the floor from his fit of laughter he screamed wordlessly and brought his hands up to his face. “Nooooooooo!”he shouted again, scrabbling backwards across the dance-floor, shrieking and shaking his head. “You’re _early_! I’m not _ready_!”

The Wendigo could not see Batman’s face, but the cowl tilted ever so slightly at the unexpected reaction.

Harley was shaking too, head flitting between the Batman and the Joker before he fell to his knees with his hands up. His voice, when he begged for his life, lost its high-pitched frequency and made him sound his age.

“Oh god, oh god. Please – puh-please don’t kill me. My name is Co-Cordell Doemling, and I-I just do what he tells me to, so he won’t kill me... please… sir, please, I beg of you.”

Batman paused and considered the shaking mass. “If you stay exactly where you are, and are sincere in your surrender, I may consent to spare your life.” He turned to address the Joker. “You though, you have forfeited your right to that consideration.”

He continued advancing on the Joker, who was trying to crawl between the legs of the dancers. One of them fell over with a sickening crack as their varnished arm snapped, followed by a similar ugly crunch as their skull hit the floor.

The Wendigo watched from his hidden position, a hand cupping his face with great amusement, a feeling that only expanded as he watched the nurse pick himself up on surprisingly nimble feet and dart forward with a raised fist. Batman spun and grabbed the wrist, but that was apparently the plan, because the hypodermic was in the other hand, and it slid up into the soft tissue below his chin.

One of Batman’s curved blades slashed across Harley’s belly, but as the nurse fell back and collapsed on the floor, the Wendigo saw Batman’s eyes widen. He kept his feet for a moment longer, and then collapsed to the floor.

The Joker’s laughter pealed through the ballroom, echoing off the walls and high ceiling, highlighting the excellent acoustics of the space. As entertaining as the scene had been, the unhinged hysteria in the laughter brought goosebumps to the surface of the Wendigo’s skin, and he shivered uneasily. Here was a mind he would do well to avoid getting too close to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you like! Let me know if you did, your validation makes me purr! (And RL is a f***ing fire-hose!)
> 
> Next week's chapter starts with the Joker's POV, warning: madness incoming...


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Joker’s POV is in the present tense, ‘cause he’s insane and he insisted.
> 
> 1/3rd of the way down it switches back to past tense for Batman.

The Joker jumps to his feet and dusts himself off, raucous laughter fading into breathless giggles. Adjusting his bow tie, he deftly weaves back through the finely dressed dancers, pursing his lips into an unhappy moue as he regards the fallen guest. He picks him up and places him back on his feet, tutting at the ruin of his crushed face.

The snapped arm falls out of its sleeve, and he sighs, world-weary, before picking it up with a high giggle and resting it in the arms of his dance partner. 

He sweeps forward again, head tilted at a jaunty angle, and looks down upon his Batman. His eyes are still open, which is excellent, and they stare up at him with all their terrible wrath and fury. He can see it, see it through the death-mask his bat wears, the carefully painted expressions that don’t move, but sing, just like the Mona Lisa. “Oh Bats.” He coos affectionately. “I have missed you.”

To one side, Harley snivels and keens, and the Joker rolls his head in exasperation. 

“Give me a _minute_!” He complains, then scratches through his hair, sighs, and goes to crouch next to his minion. He shushes without sympathy and peels back the clothes around Harley’s stomach. Thick dark blood wells up from the laceration, and the Joker hums musingly. “Well. I’m no doctor… but…” He digs his finger into the lip of the wound. Harley screams. “I’ve cut up my fair share of bodies, and I think he only clipped your chub, bub.” The Joker tilts his head with a wide smile. “Nothing fatal, Pumpkin Pie.”

He shimmies across the floor to crouch next to Batman, points at him with a dripping index finger, the white of his glove red up to the second joint. 

“Tut tut Batman. Jealousy is unbecoming of a man such as yourself. You’re always trying to take away my Harleys; you should know they’re not a threat to you. What we have-” the Joker waves his finger between them, dislodging another smatter of blood-drops, “goes beyond any _mortal_ bond, it transcends these empty shades.” He cocks his head, and rolls Batman onto his back from the crumpled position he had landed in, and folds his arms over his chest; a chaste fairy-tale princess, waiting for her prince. 

“There, there. This was all meant to be for you, you know. A big party for our reunion, I know how you like _grand gestures_. But-” The Joker sighs with bitter-sweet forbearance. “You just couldn’t wait to see me. Heeheehee!”

He stands and pulls the walkie-talkie from the back of his purple suit pants. “Oh bo-oys. Our guest of honour has arrived early and needs some _entertaining_. Bring the restraints.” 

‘ _Yes boss, uh, Mr Joker, Sir.’  
_

The Joker nods and waves an irritated hand as though they can see it. “Just hurry up!” 

The itching sensation that he associates with unwelcome eyes goes creeping up his spine and neck and he twists around a few times, then peers at all the dancers with distrust. Nothing to see here, nothing to see, move along. He starts to giggle again, strolling up and down next to Batman’s body, shoes squeaking every time he turns abruptly on his toes.

“Batty Batty Bat. Do you see all the trouble I go to for you? All these guests? I invited most of them myself, of course, hand delivered their silver tickets, hmhmm, but sometimes you have to delegate.” He shakes his head in remorse. “Too impatient. I wanted a full house. So, yes, I sent to cold storage for some extras, that’s how you found me hummm? 

“Hahahaheeheeeeheeee. Of course you did, once I returned to Gotham it was only a matter of time. We’re drawn to each other, aren’t we Bats? Connected. We were nearly so much more. We were nearly con _joined_. I want that, I want it so neither of us can survive separation.

“I know, I know, you’re paralysed, so you can’t say it, but I know you want that too.

“We nearly got there Bats... you were so close, so close to your becoming. But we were torn apart; I _became_ and you…” The Joker simpers mournfully. “You _regressed_. You’re back to what you were.

“Heeeee heeeeee. But look, it’s ok, I’m still here. And here _we_ are again, and this time, it’s your turn to transform, and I will break you apart and put you back together, haha, just like you were always meant to be.”

His boys come crashing into the room, twelve of them, two of them lugging a vertical wheelchair up the stairs from the staging area, another carrying a kit bag full of weapons. The others all hold their baseball bats and crowbars, eyeing Bats and Harley nervously. Oh yeah, Harley.

“You and you, take him back to base. Get him patched up.”

“Uh, boss?”

“Yessssss?”

“Might be… difficult with just two of us.”

“Fine, fine, you two, go too.”

The four men lift Harley by a limb each, who cries out in pain again, and whines something about a gurney. Where would they get a gurney from at this hour? Honestly. So impractical, his Harley.

He turns to where his dogs have locking the wheelchair in its vertical position and are looking down at the murderous eyes of his Bats, reluctant to touch the god that walks among them.

“Get him strapped in, come on, come on.” He chivvies them, honestly, what do they do when he’s not around? Do they just stand and stare at the walls? He’s often wondered if they even exist when they leave his sight. He’s still not sure about that. Pretty much the only one he _is_ sure exists when out of sight is Batman. And wouldn’t it be glorious if it really were just the two of them, in all of existence? It’s simple enough that it might be true; Ockham’s switchblade, or something. 

The Joker puts a hand to his cheek and hums happily; a paralysed Batman is a sight to behold. Like a tiger on the operating table. A creature of power with no voice to roar, no strength to claw. 

Once Bats is secure, the men stand back and fan out around him in a semi-circle. The Joker dances in and rubs their noses together before relieving the Bat of his curved knives. He spins with his arms out, a brief sharp tornado. “Heeeheeeheee! This isn’t how I imagined our reunion, Batsy, but we can still have our party, and then I can start to break you. And I’m going to break you so beautifully Batman. You just wait.”

He shuts his teeth with a clack and stretches his mouth to its most painful grin, takes a moment to wait with his Batman, savour the anticipation. 

Of course, one of his fool employ _ees_ decides this ‘lull’ in conversation is the moment to unveil his big idea.

“Uh, boss?”

“What?”

“Can we take off his mask?”

The Joker scrunches up his nose, confused. “What? Why?”

“To… to see who he is.”

He leans in to his underling with a sympathetic hangdog look. “Oh squirrel. I can tell you who he is.” He lowers his voice. “He’s the Batman.”

“Yeah, but… who he is… really.”

“Oh, I see, you want to see _underneath_ , is that what you mean?”

The man nods, less and less convinced, eyes flicking down to Batman’s curved blades in the Joker’s hands. But he shouldn’t be so uncertain, it really is an excellent idea. 

“Yes. Oh yes! You’re right, we absolutely should. Take off that painted face. But I don’t want to do it too soon. It’ll spoil the fun. You though, I can do you if you like?”

“Uh, what?”

The Joker snaps forward cuts the tendons behind the left elbow and plunges the other knifebetween the cervical vertebrae on the right side of the henchman’s neck. The man goes limp on that side, his other arm flapping and caught on the blade, and the Joker follows him to the floor, kneeling on his chest as he leans in to peel off his face. 

It’s not a tidy job. If the man would stop wriggling and screaming it would be a lot neater. I mean, goddamn, this was his suggestion in the first place, didn’t he want to have a good funny time? Didn’t he want to show his true face? Didn’t he want to look _just like the boss_?   
  
\- - - 

The Joker had apparently forgotten that he was already broken, long before Hannibal first donned the Bat persona, long before he had convinced him to peel off his own face. The thick white foundation covering his scar tissue obscured the worst of the damage, but leant him a ghoulish otherworldly aspect. Batman could reluctantly admit the lunatic bore it with panache. 

With only enough control to move his eyes, Hannibal watched the Joker skinning the dermis off the henchman’s face, as the man bled out from the neck wound onto the chequered dance-floor. Not an arterial spray, one of the veins then, perhaps both. 

The other thugs looked ill, with the exception of one or two who appeared to be twitching to try their own hand at the brutality. Hannibal flicked his eyes up to the square hole in the vent, but the black clad figure of his fickle companion was no longer visible. 

“I like these!” The Joker paused mid-flay to hold one dripping blade to the light. “What is it? A linoleum knife? Mmm, but sharp on both sides.” He flashed a fond indulgent glance at Batman. “You always were very particular in your tools.” The man below him gurgled. “There there there.” He soothed, returning to separated flesh from fat, “it’ll be over soon and you’ll feel _so_ much better. I know I did! The _air_ never felt so _fresh_.” 

Behind the smacking wet noises, the gentle snick of the razor, and the whimpers of the dying man, came the distinct crack of a spine snapping, and the dull percussion of a limp body striking the floor. 

As the heads in the room jerked up to land on the intruder that Hannibal couldn’t see, but could guess the identity of, a whip snapped into view and coiled around the throat of one of the henchman, pulling him off his feet while a winded grunt from Batman’s left – and the splash that followed it – told him a third man had been gutted in the interim. The remaining henchmen joined the fray, while the Joker knelt on the dead man’s chest and grinned in maniacal glee at the gate-crasher. 

The Joker looked down at his mauled henchman and slapped his flayed face, his white gloves completely and indecently crimson. “Nothing. How strange. Guess you never existed after all.”

He rose to his feet and stretched, slicked his hair back from his face, painting a dark streak through his chlorine green hair, indifferent to the sounds of the fight coming from Hannibal’s side. The Joker looked up and made eye contact before stepping closer to Hannibal, wearing a pout that looked froglike on the unnaturally wide slit of his mouth. “Well, Bats, I can’t say I’m not disappointed. You spoil your big surprise, you hardly speak to me all night, and you bring a _date_ to _our_ reunion.” He shook his head and reached to produce the walkie-talkie. 

To one side, grunting, snarling and choking noises carried on. The Joker glanced down at his radio and began to giggle. “No, no, no. Tsk.” He threw it in the direction of the fight as though he were lobbing a grenade and cackled, reaching back into his jacket and searching his waistband and pockets. 

“I really wanted to make a strong impression on you Bats. But if the audience aren’t engaged, then all you can do is leave them with a bang! Aha!”

The Joker triumphantly held up a remote with a single red button on it, the sleeve of his purple suit sliding down to expose a pale bony wrist. His thumb depressed over the clicker, and the subdued lighting in the ballroom pulsed into jumping coloured disco lights. Jangled carnival music creaked and wheezed and whined into a whimsical dirge, and the chandelier above them lowered from the ceiling to reveal a large circular sea mine. Canted as Batman was in the contraption he was strapped to, he could see the bomb had been re-rigged with a green digital clock counting down from five. 

“Hee hee hee, always a blast, Bat-”

The whip cracked and the Joker skittered away, the remote flying from his hand. 

“Ooh-hoo-hoo. You’re a firecracker aren’t you! I wonder, are you going to chase me or save him? How exciting!” He spun and sprinted for the door. 

The Wendigo rushed into Hannibal’s line of sight, making an aborted attempt to the chase the Joker down, black gloves dripping, before his feet slowed and he looked back at Batman with a scowl. His eyes flashed up to the clock and he ground his teeth before hurrying back to unbuckle his ‘bait’.

Staggering slightly to find his balance, the Wendigo draped Batman across his back. Hannibal watched the ground pass as his porter jogged as quickly as he could with the extra mass. 

The sudden chill of night air embraced them as they belted through the exit, and the Wendigo ran to the edge of the cliff. 

“Shit.” He panted, setting Batman’s feet on the ground and holding him up with an arm under his shoulder. “You’re heavy. Can you move at all yet?” 

Hannibal glared at him and his lip twitched in what may have been intended as a snarl. The Wendigo clicked his jaw. “Well, that’s a shame. Would have been nice to have a softer landing.” 

And then the ground tilted, the air shifted, and cliffs were streaming passed, the ocean rushing towards him. His hands refused to respond and activate the cape. Behind him, a terrific concussion and a bright flash of light, and then the water arrived with a blow. Just barely, he managed to keep half a breath of air in his lungs. 

When the turbulence calmed, the half a breath buoyed him up slightly towards the glow above. The air-liquid interface pattering with shrapnel from the explosion, streaking and slowing towards him as the river filtered out their momentum. His half-full lungs were not enough to let him break the water though, not with the weight of his cape and suit, and he hung suspended within striking distance of the surface. 

His chest began to seize with the need to draw in oxygen, and he resisted with every ounce of his strength, the paralytic in his system fighting his control. 

A shadow swam in from his left and clamped onto his arm, heaving him up the remaining distance to life-saving air.

The Wendigo found them shelter under a nearby overpass, and dumped Batman in a garden chair that reeked of beer and mould. Hannibal watched as the man dragged a cinder coated oil drum before him and set about collecting litter to burn. The Wendigo maintained the silence between them throughout, and despite Batman’s curiosity, the silence provided some welcome respite after the Joker’s interminable chatter. 

Since the loss of his parents and the cruel death of his sister, few things in this life had caused Hannibal anxiety. Alfred’s ailing health was one. The Joker was another. 

Hannibal had happily carved his way through Gotham City’s underbelly, cutting away diseased tissue and cancerous growth. The cancer had metastasized long ago, the city – like the human race – would not live forever, and crime spread through civilisation’s arteries with every pulse of life. There were the rude, the cruel, and the insane; the Joker, while thoroughly the latter, belonged in a category all of his own. 

His particular blend of psychoses coupled with his fixation on Batman, on the Ripper, created a nexus that was… flattering, delusional, and entirely dangerous. Worst of all, it was completely unpredictable.

The noxious smelling fire in its barrel started to put out a little heat, and the Wendigo continued to come and go, gathering odd lengths of wood, pallets, and stained magazines from the various corners of the dilapidated outskirts. 

Finally, having collected a large enough pile to satisfy himself, Hannibal heard him knock over another oil drum and roll it over. He straddled it and leaned back on the heels of his hands, apparently pleased with the fruits of his labour. Still, he did not speak.

The paralytic agent began to wear off as Batman’s front was finally drying out. He managed to slowly ball his hands into fists, not very tightly, and continued to clench and unclench them, working his toes in his boots, and trying to push up with the balls of his feet.

The Wendigo noticed, “That’s good. Can you talk yet?”

“Let’s see, a little.” He slurred. 

Giving a satisfied nod, the Wendigo fed a table leg into the perforated oil drum; the flames licked up at it excitedly.

“Then I think we should have a little chat about your friend.”

“I’d really rather we didn’t call him that.”

“Not quite as dead as one could have hoped.” The Wendigo mused. “How exactly did you ‘kill’ him last time?”

Batman sighed. “By playing along. I don’t think it will work a second time.”

“It didn’t work the first time. Why didn’t you cut him up as you do all the others?”

“His crimes… warranted a different sort of punishment. And…” He regarded the Wendigo warily, the other man had him entirely at a disadvantage – perhaps it would be unwise to reveal too much of his true nature in this situation.

Apparently, worries about concealing and revealing were moot, because the Wendigo sat up properly and went from looking _at_ him to looking _through_ him, a soft smile ghosting his lips. “And… you were curious. Curious to see what would happen if you were to wind him up. Wind him up and watch him go.”

Batman flicked his eyes away, uncharacteristically breaking the connection first, and tried to smother a surge of disquiet. There had been something fascinating about the clown when he had first appeared on the radar; showy splashy kills, some tributes to the Ripper, others acts of spontaneous creativity. But he had been reckless and careless and wantonly destructive. Where Batman preferred to be the city’s surgeon, the Joker wished to carve something wholly ‘other’ out of Gotham’s bones. 

“Up to a point.”

The Wendigo snorted. “Seems like you missed the point.”

Batman clenched his jaw. “I didn’t create the Joker.”

“No. But you made him worse, didn’t you?”

“Hard to prove or disprove that. There’s no yardstick for a mind like his, no alternate history to compare the evolution of his pattern to. I’ve been… an inspiration for him, since before we met, but his psychosis would have latched onto something eventually.”

“Very convenient for you.” The Wendigo sneered.

Hannibal wondered if he were on trial, and decided it was safer not to ask. If the man had cast himself as judge and jury, his deportment suggested he would value honesty in this setting.

“He ‘courted’ me. We fought and he escaped. He continued to pursue me. Eventually I pretended to entertain the notion. We spent some time together. His madness was… a thing of beauty, but too unstable.”

“You mean you couldn’t control it.” 

“I determined he was too volatile for a long-term study, and convinced him to eat his own face. Before we were finished, we were interrupted: Harley Quinn – the original Harley that is – discovered us and became… quite aggravated.” 

Batman paused, thinking on the ensuing debacle; the excruciating shrieking of the motley nurse, the Henchmen piling through the door. Hannibal had carved each one down as they arrived, the dancer in him fusing with butcher and surgeon to evade, disable and eviscerate the clumsy attackers. 

Bleeding profusely from the face, laughing merrily, the Joker had mimicked Batman for a moment, slicing up the two men who came to ‘rescue’ him. Harley dragged him to the roof and into a helicopter, the Joker still screaming for Batman to follow as the pilot lifted from the pad.

Batman had fired his grapple into the tail rotor and released the gun. The cable had whipped the barrel into the main rotor and the craft had half ripped itself apart before crashing into the river. 

“They escaped in a helicopter, and I dropped it into the river.” 

The Wendigo’s mouth twisted humourlessly as he considered the abridged story. Hannibal found he could stretch his spine and tense his stomach muscle, and he leaned forward to shift his weight. The increase in his pins and needles told him the movement was bringing his system back online with greater rapidity. 

“And how did you come to find his trail?”

This question had the Wendigo nodding, he had been expecting it, and yet the wince that pulled his lips down suggested he had yet to prepare a satisfactory response. The sigh corroborated the flinch. 

“I… was investigating a spate of disappearances. I traced their movements, found where they’d been taken… most of them killed on the spot. The kills were messy, but precisely so. There was a fever to them… a purity almost. The victims were hardly being selected so much as… stumbled upon. When I heard bodies were disappearing too, it made sense. Someone was building a collection.”

Batman was silent for a moment. “You profiled the Joker?”

“I didn’t know it was him, not for certain, not until the van brought me to Funland. It seemed a safe bet after that.”

A man who could climb into the Joker’s mind, and climb out again. Fascinating. 

“You said you already knew my design. You have profiled me too?”

The fire gleamed off the Wendigo’s delighted teeth. “I don’t find you that interesting.”

With those words, any doubts in Hannibal’s mind were summarily executed. 

“You will.” It was a promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> And let me tell you, this night has had a much more profound effect on the Wendigo than he's currently letting on.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy this strange corner of my mind ;)

  
Hannibal sat on the veranda enjoying a late breakfast and reading the newspaper with cynical indulgence when Alfred appeared from the French windows and cleared his throat. He had a tub of concealer in his hand and a towel draped over his arm.

“Yes, Alfred?”

“You have a caller, sir, Mr Graham, the young man from Price Brothers. I have shown him into the drawing room. I thought it best we cover your ‘souvenirs’ first.”

He had noticed his reflection in the morning light showed the first blushes of bruises forming down one side of his face, the impact with the water having made its mark. 

This unanticipated visit lifted his spirits; he had almost forgotten the intriguing young man after the shock of finding the Joker still lived, and the captivating creature that had betrayed and then rescued him. Folding the broadsheet, Hannibal tilted his face towards his valet. “Very well Alfred, I submit to your expertise.” 

Alfred’s practiced hands smoothed the flesh coloured foundation over the mottled red shades that were still darkening on his face, and dabbed the excess off with the towel before scrubbing his own hands clean with the rest of the material. 

“It’s not perfect, but it should make you less conspicuous.” Alfred mused, with extra wrinkles where he squinted.

“I shouldn’t worry too much, this particular young man is not overly-fond of looking one in the face.”

“As you say sir.”

“Will you bring coffee?”

“Of course.” 

Hannibal stood, straightening his shirt and donning his jacket, then marched back into the cool corridors of his ancestral home. Curiosity and anticipation buzzed pleasantly where his breakfast digested, and he readily postponed his plans for the edits on his latest academic publication.

The drawing room was on the other side of the house, and the angle of the light slanted in sideways through the wide windows, illuminating one side of the room and leaving the other half in shadow. 

The apprentice stood in a sunbeam, examining a family portrait from when Hannibal’s father had been a child. 

“My grandparents and father.” Hannibal supplied, walking up to stand next to the slim figure, but stopping a few feet away as the abrasive aftershave reasserted itself. He wore his own clothes in lieu of his work overalls, but it seemed his own choice in garb were at least as poorly cut and loose. At least the baseball cap had not found its way back in with the young man. Without it, a crop of dark curls tumbled about his ears, tawny where the light hit them. He had cleaned up his stubble too, cropping it closer to the skin.

“I can see the resemblance.” The young man offered distantly, not turning, as though Hannibal’s voice had been one of his own thoughts in his head. 

Hannibal tried again, maintaining a conversational tone rather than the switching to the cold one he might otherwise have used when finding himself ignored.

“Good morning Mr Graham, to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

“Dr Lecter.” The young man rasped, and finally turned to meet his eyes briefly. The angle of sun caught his irises and turned them a vibrant airy blue. Hannibal felt the bereavement all the more acutely when the eyes slid away again. Graham stepped forward and presented the book he had been gifted with the day before. “I’ve come to return this – I can’t accept it.”

Hannibal canted his head slightly, allowing displeasure to manifest distantly on his features. “Why ever not?”

The young man swallowed, and Hannibal watched the bob of his Adam’s apple. “I looked it up. It’s worth over five thousand dollars.”

“This makes you uncomfortable.”

“It makes me indebted to you.”

“On the contrary. It is my privilege to share such treasures, and I find it distasteful to ‘lend’ books.”

Graham’s mouth pressed tighter in frustration. He fidgeted with conflicting body language; a part of him clearly dealing with the unsavoury taste in his own mouth, but the covetous splay of his fingers on the slim book suggested a reluctance to part with it.

“That philosophy works fine when dealing with mass market paperbacks, but this is a first edition that’s been in your family at least three generations.”

Lecter knew his family history was in the public archives; his parents’ names had been in the papers often enough, even before their brutal slaying. His mother’s parents on the other hand, for someone of Mr Graham’s generation, would have required a little research. It warmed him to know this man had spared the time.

“Your concern is noted, and appreciated. However, I find I am quite besieged by the heirlooms of my ancestors. Additionally, if my perception of equality were based solely on fiscal considerations, I should have few enough peers, and even fewer with redeeming qualities. Please, accept it, and if its monetary value truly makes you uncomfortable, you may gift in on in turn.”

The white knuckled grip tightened possessively on the spine of the book. 

Alfred appeared with a tray of coffee, dispelling the charge building in the room. He greeted the young man again with a personable smile as he set down the coffee. “Master Graham, I didn’t know if you took cream or sugar, so I’ve brought them along just in case.”

The young man shuffled on his feet. “Oh, thank you. I-I’ll take some cream. And please, call me Will. You too.” He added, motioning to Hannibal with his chin.

“Thank you sir.” Alfred replied, reassuringly warm in tone despite stepping around the offer of familiarity. He poured the coffee and placed the cups on the low walnut table between the settees. “Can I retrieve anything else for you gentlemen?”

Hannibal raised a questioning eyebrow in Will’s direction, but the young man had ducked his gaze away again; answer enough. “No, thank you Alfred, and don’t worry about preparing lunch, I have a recipe I’d like to try.” 

Alfred gave a taut nod, the stiffness not solely a result of his ailing physique. “Very good sir.” He left the room, closing the doors behind him. 

“Please, Will, have a seat.” 

“Thanks.” He muttered out of his frown, two small lines running between his brows.

Seating himself across from him, Hannibal wistfully considered the foibles of his ‘butler’. “Don’t take it personally. I’ve been trying to get Alfred to call me ‘Hannibal’ since I was ten. I hope you will take less persuasion.”

The luminous blue eyes came up again, the pain in them momentarily jarring Hannibal from the comfortable atmosphere he was attempting to foster. The disconcerted feeling only strengthened when Will blurted out, “How awful.”

“I beg your pardon?” Thoroughly mystified, he watched as Will’s eyes welled with tears and he wiped them quickly away.

“Sorry. I- sorry.” His cheeks turned a rosy shade of mortification, blanched at the edges.

“It’s quite alright, Will. Please, as a former psychiatrist I do not subscribe to the mythology that expressing emotion is unsuitable for men. In fact, I think it is quite healthy.” Hannibal reviewed the conversation in his head; Will’s reactions up to that point had not indicated distress beyond frustration. 

“Ha. It’s okay. It’s not really my emotion.”

Curiouser and curiouser. “Oh? Who’s is it?”

The apprentice winced. “Yours, I suppose.”

Hannibal blinked, more confounded than ever. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

Reaching to pick up his coffee and glare into its clouded surface, Will’s body had tensed, limbs shifting with small unnecessary adjustments. He sighed out a rough breath and gradually calmed. 

“I have an empathy disorder. It gets me in trouble sometimes.” His lips coiled up in a barbed wire smile. 

Intrigued but sceptical, Hannibal reached for his own coffee. “I can assure you, my own emotions are quite mild this morning. I do hope it was not Alfred who was feeling so troubled.”

Will scoffed, his back teeth briefly grinding over each other in annoyance. “No, I’m not a psychic. I’m not picking up on ‘energy’ or anything like that. Perhaps this morning your mood is mild, but…” he shook his head. “Look, I’m sorry. Really. This is – hah – this is why I don’t have any friends.” He flinched again and put down his cup, rubbing the palms of one hand on his pant leg and reluctantly placing the book onto the polished table, next to the silver tray. “And however… noble, your motivations. I can’t accept a gift like this.”

The man looked primed to stand and dismiss himself; Hannibal leaned forward in his seat, pushing for eye contact and allowing some of his mettle shine forth. He glossed over the book – for now. “Forgive me Will, I can see the topic makes you uncomfortable, but let me assure you, I would rather hear what you have to say than to guess at what you meant.” 

_And if you leave now I will take much greater offence than if you leave those thoughts unfinished_. He didn’t say the words, but as Will heard his tone and met his eyes, he seemed to feel the weight of them regardless. He rubbed a hand over his face and nodded miserably, lifting and dropping his shoulders in resignation. 

“I make associations quickly. I know your story, everyone in Gotham does, orphaned at a young age, then you lost your only sibling - your only other family. You were raised by your butler… who has apparently never warmed up enough to even call you by your first name. I imagine that physical distance and metaphysical distance have shown themselves to be quite separate creatures for you. I’m glad you’re not feeling it this morning, but I _see_ it in you, a great distance, a gulf.”

For the second time in twenty-four hours, Hannibal found himself paralysed. 

“I don’t pity you.” Will explained, shrugging, a hand creeping up to rub the back of his neck. “There’s nothing weak or vulnerable about you. You’ve still been incredibly lucky by some standards. But… well, I felt it. That’s all.”

Hannibal engaged his motor neurons and brought his coffee to his lips. A con-man could run a very successful racket with this kind of approach. Everything the man said was true, including the admission that all of Gotham knew his history. One could use a pretty face and a challenging yet charming demeanour, the ability to read people, to ford some strange segue into intimacy and forge a bond. 

Yet, this didn’t feel like a forgery. Hannibal’s ability to read people had been honed over nearly four decades of study. Not everything from this man’s mouth was delivered with sincerity; he had an agenda and had played with his words on his last visit, but today he appeared to have been swept here by a strange tide. 

“Then it is for me to apologise, if you were forced to carry my particular burden, even for a moment. However, as you are no doubt bound by your nature as I am by mine, we must consider using apologies sparingly.”

Will brought his eyes up while Hannibal spoke, and held the contact for longer than he had previously. The feeling was not dissimilar to juggling with a partner; an exchange, a tenuous balance, a growing satisfaction as the rhythm held between them. The young man coughed out a startled laugh and sat back. His lips described neither smile nor frown, but hesitated somewhere between the two. Thoughts chased behind his eyes, the way cirrus clouds scud the edge of the stratosphere in high winds. 

“May I still keep the book?” He asked quietly. 

“I would really rather you did.” 

They shared a smile, and judging the timing to break the building tension before it became uncomfortable for the other man, Hannibal inquired after other poets Will enjoyed.

As they spoke Hannibal took note of the sunbeams as they shifted and shortened over Will’s shoulders, the planet rotating in its clockwork path around its core, and that of the solar system. As the man across from him relaxed, his speech pattern and the shape of his lips as he talked struck a chord of familiarity in Hannibal. The note hung in the air of his memory palace, but striding through its corridors he couldn’t place its origin. 

“Can I invite you to stay for lunch?” Hannibal offered, when their conversation hit a natural pause. 

The change in topic jolted Will from his easy bubble, and his face closed. Hannibal believed, if it were not for that awful aftershave, he would smell anxiety rolling off the man. Will’s face tipped into a mimicry of his former confidence, gave every appearance of preparing to deflect the invitation, and pleasantly surprised Hannibal by accepting.   
  
\- - -

Will had lost his footing somewhere along the way. While he was not a man to form expectations, he owned a keen insight that afforded certain predictive capabilities, but the events of the last twenty-four hours kept getting away from him. 

Now he was in Hannibal Lecter’s kitchen, watching him prepare what was – very likely – human flesh. He was standing above the Batcave, with the Arkham Ripper himself. 

By his code, despite the intrigue Hannibal roused, he should have died last night. The Joker had changed that, and not just by escaping. While Batman remained the best bait to catch the Joker, he couldn’t deny that if he hadn’t chosen to free him, he might have actually caught the clown, as intended.

And yet. And yet.

He had heard every word the Joker lovingly serenaded his Batman with. His tongue dripped with the sweet honeyed nectar of madness, it filled him up so that nothing else could fit into the cracks. Nothing except for Batman, and madness and Batman made a cocktail the gods would spit out their ambrosia to consume. 

Why Batman why Batman _why Batman_? The Ripper didn’t embrace the madness without… he embraced the madness within. The Dark Knight bridled his madness, dressed it in a suit and hee hee hee, let it out on weekends. That beautiful trapped insanity needed to be released, freed, allowed to rejoin the greater madness. It wasn’t fair to keep it separate. Like keeping a killer whale in an aquarium. It belonged in the ocean! The ocean of madness…

“Will?”

Cerebral cortex leaping to reconnect the visual feed, Will realised Hannibal had come to stand in front of him.

“Yes?” He asked, the question sounding less innocent to his ears than he had hoped.

“Where did you go just now?”

“I’m sorry. I – uh, slept pretty bad last night.”

“Asleep on your feet?” He moved back round to the counter. “I shall endeavour to make my conversation more stimulating.” Far from sounding offended, Hannibal threw a potato in the air and skewered it on the tip of his knife with a smile. 

Will felt his mouth stretching wider in a slow smirk and gave a light chuckle. “Did you go to chef school as well as medical school?”

“Not exactly. Alfred taught me to begin with, and I occasioned to sous-chef with Antoine de Pontac when I studied in Florence. The greater part of it since then has been self-taught. Each meal is a lesson.”

“Hah. You might not feel that way if you saw my kitchen, it’s a crude place for any education.” 

Hannibal pursed his lips at the potato he was dicing. “I should like to see your kitchen.”

Time to address the elephant in the room, the one that had been sitting like a giant balloon animal in the corner, a gaudy Koons sculpture that one tried not to look at too directly. 

“Yeah. I’m not sure you would.” He wanted the statement to come out humorous and self-deprecating. Really, it sounded like what it was, a statement of fact. “My whole flat would fit in this kitchen. Don’t think I’m exaggerating.”

Hannibal scooped up the cubes of potato in his hands and dropped them into the warm oil, which sizzled gently. “In addition to living in manors and historic cities, I did spend three years in a monastery in the Himalayas, with only a cot in a small stone cell to call my own.”

Will cast him a sheepish look, apologising in advance for what he was about to say. “But that’s not true is it? With one phone call, you could have had a helicopter fly out and pick you up, and never have an empty belly again. It’s different if it’s a choice to go hungry.” 

“Of course, you are quite right.” Hannibal cracked eggs into a bowl in a series of choreographed movements. “I merely intended to demonstrate that I do not rely on the trappings of my environment for my general contentment.”

Nodding, placated, Will considered the information. “I can’t really imagine you as a monk.”

The expression on Hannibal’s face suggested he shared in the humour of the idea.

Further patterns emerged as Will folded fresh information into his profile of the Ripper. A brilliant mind perched above a pitiless chasm of sucking emptiness; reaching out in all directions to try and find a substance that could plug the hole. Medicine. Surgery. Psychiatry. Dance. Cooking. Literature. Culture. Martial arts. _Sword-skills. Paragliding. Vigilantism. Murder. Cannibalism._

_The only thing that can fill that void is madness Bats, why do you resist it? Can’t you feel it, leering over your shoulder, waiting for you to let it in?_

Will shook himself. The clown’s voice was sticking around longer than it should, he needed to be more vigilant. At least the elephant in the corner had burst, and lunch was beginning to smell really good.

\- - -

It generally ran opposed to Hannibal’s principles to call on the police commissioner, but there were times when it was in his interests. The night after his confrontation with the Joker, Hannibal assured Alfred he would not actively seek out altercations, but he must don the Bat-Suit to confide in Crawford. 

A few tactics existed for making the visits to dour Commissioner Crawford more entertaining. The first was to intercept him in new and unexpected ways, preferably somewhere between the precinct and his apartment, though on occasion surprising him at home kept the unspoken threat ringing more loudly in Crawford’s ears. 

Tonight Hannibal was bruised and had other things to occupy his mind, so he opted for simplicity. He swooped in, seized Jack, and grappled them to the rooftop of the ten floor apartment block above the convenience store he had been about to enter. He released Jack to stagger, reeling, as his mind caught up with his body.

“Goddammit.” He wheezed, before repeating the curse with more force. 

Jack had survived Gotham’s streets long enough to become commissioner for a reason; a broad man, brute strength and dogged determination had served him where his service weapon could not. Hannibal admired him, even if he found the articles of his faith contemptuous. 

“Good evening, Commissioner Crawford.”

“Go fuck yourself Batman.” The commissioner growled back. “I’ve got a goddamn heart condition.”

Hannibal magnanimously ignored the vulgarity, strode closer and sniffed him. Crawford bristled and stepped back. “What-?”

“Are you experiencing any angina?”

“No, but if you keep… doing that, I might.”

“I’m afraid the news I bear might prove a different source of provocation.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The explosion in Amusement Mile? The clown is abroad in Gotham again.”

Jack’s hand went to his chest then, and Hannibal cocked his head, waiting to see if this information truly might finish the man. In the low light, and with Jack’s dark skin, it was difficult to tell if the blood had left his face, but he found a chimneystack to lean on and braced himself there. 

“Are you experiencing any shortness of breath? Pressure in your chest?”

“I’m fine.” Jack snapped.

“Anxiety?”

He pushed himself off the chimney and stood up straighter. “Of course I’m anxious. You told us he was dead!”

“You saw footage of the helicopter crash. I saw him board it, I heard his voice. His survival was unlikely.”

“Well if anyone was gonna come back from the dead, makes sense – with my luck – it would be that crazy son-of-a-bitch.”

“My sentiments exactly, Commissioner.” He allowed a small fraction of his own worry and anger into his voice, and Crawford’s eyes snapped back. 

“We’ve had cops go missing. Is this related?”

“It pains me to admit I still know very little, and nothing of that.”

“Well, what do you know? Tell me everything. We got him once, or good as, we’ll sure as hell nail the bastard this time.”

Unfortunately, Hell was another concept Hannibal had his doubts about. 

  
Leaving Jack to make his own way down from the rooftop, Hannibal found himself gliding in the direction of the Cathedral again. The knowledge of why he was doing so percolated slowly in his mind without judgement or justification. 

Mercifully, the wind was coming from the East, smelling mainly of brine and faintly of restaurant kitchens. He walked the perimeter of the dome and paused by the view to the morgue, turning to look up at where his grapple had made a mark in the curved roof.

“Never figured you for a narc.” 

Hannibal whipped around. The Wendigo crouched on the edge of the building, a satisfied smirk in the gravel of his voice. The fractured surface of the mask reflecting back the dark light. 

“The police needed to know The Joker is back.”

“Don’t trust yourself to handle it this time?”

Batman scowled. “I needed to up-regulate the city’s stress response system. The Joker is a creature of pure chaos. A rogue proton. An untethered blood clot. A radical oxygen species that destroys whatever it touches.”

“That’s… weirdly medical and poetic. Showing the man behind the mask there Bats.”

Hannibal tensed. “I’d prefer you not to refer to me in that way, it is a name irrevocably tied to the Joker, and you would do well not to encourage that association.”

The Wendigo shifted slightly, and lifted a shoulder in a half shrug, more curious than chastised. “I’ll do my best.” 

“You said you’d been tracing missing people. How many of them were police-officers?”

“None of the ones I was investigating.”

“The commissioner informed me his police officers are going missing.”

“I can dig around.”

Batman nodded. “Thank you.” A background hum of concern nagged at him. He felt something trying to get his attention, some tendril of disquiet, spliced with an uncomfortable warmth at the idea of another ally in the city. He hadn’t wanted that. He still might not.

“If you find anything, activate this.” Hannibal extended the batarang he had recovered from the vent hood the night before. The Wendigo accepted the bladed bat, tucking it into his boot. 

Batman spread his cape and launched himself South, back towards his bike, with the unaccountable sensation that in tying this Mask to him, he was bound in return.

\- - - 

The view from the city sky dips and weaves as the wind tugs at the little purple craft; four little rotas and a small housing unit for the camera, motor and CPU. It’s not altogether different from the way the Joker’s vision works from time to time, even when he’s not somehow connected to a drone halfway across the city. 

“Heee. Heehee.” His cheeks hurt with the stretch of his smile, but it’s okay, it’s the good pain. The white VR goggles have angry cartoon eyes painted on the back of them, and his gloved hands clutch the controls that steer his astral projection through the sky. 

He watches his Batman and this new creature, his date from the Ball. It stings a little, he’s big enough to admit it, but it’s not enough to ruin the voyeuristic mischief of playing I-spy with his eye in the sky. 

“Well, well, well, _Batsy,_ you’ve been making new friends in my absence. Were you so lonely without me? But perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised, I have my Harleys, after all, perhaps you need a plaything too.” 

The Bat hands his new playmate a gadget and makes a dramatic exit. So darkly ostentatious, his batman. It should all be for him, he really doesn’t like to share, but… Share… 

Share. Yes of course! Sharing is caring. And they must share and share alike. Batman plays with his Harleys, Batman must share his new toy too.

He drops the controls and claps his hands, his vision going loopy as excitement surges through him, _oh, no, hahaha, that’s just the drone crashing, oopsy._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know some of you might be thinking Hannibal is surely smart enough to have linked Will and the Wendigo, but Will has been working quite hard to disguise himself visually, vocally and olfactorily.   
> Anyway, this revelation isn't too far away now!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another slightly longer chapter, but I don't know about you guys, I prefer reading longer chapters personally!

Returning to the Batcave, Batman took up his Human-Suit once again, the mask in place for Alfred, who – despite his affection and their long history – could barely stand to witness the true shape of the monster fostered under his care. 

Alfred had been at the computer as Lecter returned to the manor, but now met him where the raising platform lifted him to the upper tier of the cave. He offered Batman a tall glass of water with a slice of lime, and two pain-killers. Hannibal grudgingly accepted the latter.

“I have pulled the files of the missing detectives and forwarded them to your tablet so you may rest as you review them.”

The Batcave often provided some gratification; as a secret and as a place he had worked to make his own, unlike the inherited manor above. The spacious cavern had been modernised at its Northern end, and receding into darker damper recesses, some of which coiled, sinuous, into the flesh of the Earth. Loud noises would echo, and the bats still roosted in the south-eastern corner, near the entrance. On occasion, Hannibal still felt a visceral shiver when they would swarm, screeching, in and out of the cave system at dusk and dawn. Tonight though, solitude in a more enclosed space certainly appealed, and he often wondered how Alfred could predict with such accuracy how his moods would take him.

“Thank you Alfred. I believe I will follow your advice and retire.”

“Are you hungry sir? Can I bring you, a club sandwich perhaps? I know you had a late lunch, but after all this activity, and you are healing…” He trailed off.

Infrequent occurrence that it was, Hannibal found the times when Alfred fussed to be quite endearing. The mother hen in his butler appeared exclusively reserved for the times when his ward became his patient; a relic of the Victorian British culture that the Pennyworths must have subscribed to.

Not particularly hungry, despite his exertions, and generally preferring to prepare his own food these days, he nevertheless accepted the offer, unwilling to rebuff the old man’s rare paternal demonstrations. “I should like that very much. Thank you.”

“I shall let you shower and bring it up in half an hour.”

Hannibal turned to the elevator that would take him to the changing room adjoining the master bedroom. He spent a moment there, among his finely tailored suits, relishing the order and opulence, before stepping out into his more Spartan suite. 

He shed his human suit, and stood with lips curled over his teeth, a silent frozen snarl at the nascent vulnerability trying to put down roots in his stomach. The return of the Joker, the new Mask making itself at home on his city’s skyline, and the strange young man insinuating himself into his life… all threatened to warp the careful mantle of control he maintained. 

He should kill them all.

The Joker, without question. The new Mask? On principle. Will Graham… he could be the most dangerous of all. 

More dangerous than the Joker? Surely not. The Joker’s novelty was perennial, a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of twisted logic, hypnotic and captivating, with jagged bursts of lightning that randomly touched down their incandescent destruction. Will Graham though, he captivated with soft touches, coarse edges, and sharp insights. Reflecting his own isolation back to him, easing it simultaneously. A questing liquid with unknown properties, seeping into his cracks: should he allow it? It might turn out to be flammable.  


\- - -

Two days and nights passed after Will's last encounter with the Batman, and though he kept half an eye on the Cathedral dome, the Ripper didn’t reappear. The Wendigo had found neither hide nor hair of the missing police officers, and had no reason to call the Dark Knight. He wanted to. 

The two men - _those aren’t men -_ still loomed large in his mind. The ballroom of Funland, the dancers _suspended, waiting_ , _just as the Joker had been waiting,_ the exchange between the two characters continued to echo in his mind. 

The Bat didn’t even really _see_ the Joker, not the way Will could, he didn’t even _try_. 

He didn’t try because he was smart. He didn’t try because he had a self-preservation instinct that Will misplaced from time to time. 

The Joker didn’t _really_ appreciate the Bat. Hannibal was a scalpel, the Joker wanted a grenade. Batman was a Francis Bacon, the Joker wanted a Jackson Pollock. 

They were both hideous. They were both sublime. Perfect. Beautiful.

No, no _, no_. 

(Yes, yes _,_ _yes_.)

Frustrated after a night of following leads that led nowhere, and disturbed with his own thoughts, he returned to his building and climbed down to his flat via the fire-escape. Climbing in through the window, the snap of a bear-trap abruptly silenced the inside of his head.

The pain accompanying the noise was worse for the surprise, but grimacing down he saw the central teeth were mostly filed back, his ankle pinched but not pierced. Before any real relief could manifest at the observation, two thugs emerged from the shadows. One lifted the stocky barrel of a gun, and Will tried to scramble back out the window, but the bear-trap, chained to a heavy iron ball, kept him in place. The gun fired, and a net wrapped around him, throwing him off balance, entangling his limbs. The other man darted forward and snapped a lock around the trap’s teeth before jumping back again. 

Will had extended the claws sheathed in his gloves, scratching through the net at them, but not quickly enough. The net itself, obviously not intended to hold him long, fell shredded to the floor around him. 

“Well this _is_ a charming little hovel, isn’t it? Tell me, how long have you hated yourself, Misssster Graham?”

Will’s hair stood on end. The side lamp turned on, and reclining in the armchair in the corner of his studio apartment, sat the Joker. His fingers gripped a long barrelled nickel-plated handgun, aimed at his face. 

The deranged eyes danced with St Elmo’s fire, and Will quickly looked to the small mirror on the wall to ground himself in his identity, his Wendigo identity. He took a deep breath and looked back at the Joker, keeping his eyes to the hairline instead of the windows to his madness. He sprang to his feet, all gangly six feet five of him, and approached Will canted forward at the waist. 

“I’ll admit I’m curious about you, Misssster Graham. I know where you live, your day job with the plumber twins, but I’ll admit, I don’t know your _real_ name.” He waited for an answer, but only for a half a moment, before his face broke in two and he cackled wildly, throwing his head back. “I have some ideas though! You must let me guess!” He began pacing in front of Will, gun held limply in his wrist, no longer trained on him, but the sub-machine guns held by the two goons assured his safety for now.

“Stag Man? The Black Stag! No? Night Stag! No? Is stag even in the name? Oooh, the Black Hart! Dark Hart?” He pouted at Will’s carefully blank expression. “Antler Boy? Ok, I’m bored, what is it?”

“Wendigo.” Graham whispered, deliberating ending his short vigilante career by taking out the Joker, trading his life for an efficient kill. He might have, too, if the Joker hadn’t gasped and reached out to grab his chin and tilt his head up to meet his eyes. Graham’s blue eyes locked with the Joker’s green, and he fell forward into the sea of madness, flailing, breaking the surface, gasping for air, struggling as waves threw him to and fro, as currents tugged and tried to drag him under.  
  
“ _Wendigo._ " He breathed. "How perfect. How lovely. How perfectly lovely.” The Joker cooed, sliding an arm around Graham’s shoulder and stepping around to pull him into a comradely side-hug. He waved an outstretched gloved hand across the sweep of the room, as though illustrating an invisible skyline with an inspiring horizon. “The Wendigo: a creature with insatiable hunger. ‘The evil spirit that devours mankind!’” The Joker creased up laughing, holding onto Will for support, and only the tommy-guns stopped him from tearing through the clown’s viscera with his suit’s claws. 

The Joker stepped back, tapping his jawline, brazenly running his eyes up and down the full length of the Wendigo’s outfit. “Mmm, heeheehee, a bit short for a wendigo, aren’t you? A toy wendigo, a pet wendigo. Yes, perrrfect for petting.” The Joker stroked Will’s antlers, ripping his gloves on one and finding this hilarious. 

When he had recovered, he gestured for his goons to move the ball and chain attached to Will’s bear trap closer to Will’s bed, and positioned his hostage there. Once the guns were trained on Will again, the Joker pocketed his own pistol and dragged the armchair across the bare wooden boards, wheezing for comic effect. 

Seating himself with an unnecessary amount of wriggling to get 'comfortable', then crossing his legs to lean back in the posture of a king, the Joker glared reprovingly at Will. “The Bat thinks you’re his friend, his buddy, his amigo.” The final vowel sound stretched out and bit off. From another pocket he produced a knife and used it to catch the light and throw it into Will’s face. “Batman and I are good friends too. _Best_ friends.” The light winked off the blade, and Will squinted against the new intrusion. “So, tell me, _Wendy_ , if the enemy of my enemy is my friend, does that make the friend of my friend my _enemy?”_

A reasoned response, even if he could construct one, would be as effective as a spitting into a forest fire. He had to inure himself to flames, and step into the blaze; fight fire with fire. He fixed his voice midway between a growl and a purr.

“Where’s the fun in such rigid labels? Can’t I be both?” He let an unhinged smile break loose upon his own face, and with the Joker so close, didn’t even have to fake it.

“Oooh! Hee hee hee, and are you ‘frenemies’ with Batsy too?” The Joker asked with a gleam off his teeth. 

“I saved him from your bomb, but not before I pushed him out the vent to see what would happen.”

The gaunt madman leaned in closer, to assess the veracity of this claim. The gleam from his teeth reached his eyes then, and he hummed happily.

“Tell me Wendy, did you enjoy killing my men?”

“Were they men?” He asked, now channelling the only other man who had withstood the Joker. “And here I thought they were pigs.”

“Hee hee hee, you should brush up on your _zoology_ young wendigo, those weren’t pigs. They were my attack dogs. A mangy bunch, I grant you, little enough fur, heehee. Although, haha, some of them were pretty shaggy, hahahahah.” He leapt up from his chair, knocking it back, and the knife slipped deftly out of sight between folds of purple fabric. The Joker began pacing again, rubbing his lips with his fingers. 

“An honest wendigo, to call yourself my frenemy, seeing as you’re as reflective as your mask. But how much do you reflect and how much do you absorb, I wonder? Bats wouldn’t trust you without some kind of _method_ to your madness, and you share the need to hide in a Human Suit, this ‘Will Graham’ character.” He gestured with irritation at the Price Brothers uniform drying on a coat hanger on the wardrobe door.

“Gotta pay the bills.” Will gritted, in a foolish moment of lucidity before slipping back between the waves.

“Why?” The Joker asked, throwing his arms wide. “Hahaha, when it’s so easy to just take take _take!”_

Inclining his head at the chest of drawers in the corner, “Oh I do a fair amount of that too. Check the top drawer.”

An exaggerated expression of curiosity moved the Joker’s features, and he waltzed over to the dresser waggling his fingers in anticipation. Reaching for the drawer he turned to look at Will, pantomiming suspicion, and pulled it open while cringing and covering his head. When nothing exploded or catapulted out of the open drawer, he sighed in weary disappointment, then straightened to look inside.

“Oh my!” He said, reaching in to scoop up a tiara. He placed the jewelled diadem on his puffy green locks. “I feel positively reeeegal.” He drawled, giving a little pirouette and delving back into the drawer. “Oh _this_ is lovely.” He lifted out a large emerald and held it to the light.

“Shame you don’t have anything in purple.” He dropped the gem back in with the other trophies Will had cat-burgled from the city, leaving the tiara where it sparkled on his head. 

“Which brings us back to this hovel. Do you hate yourself? Hahaha, I think you must, to hide yourself away here, and hide your true face from the world. Let’s find out… let’s get a gooood look at you.”

He crawled onto the bed and Will jumped away, the macabre sight of the Joker spidering towards him had startling him into motion, but the bear trap and its ballast keeping him in a tight radius. The Joker reared back on his knees and laughed at the ceiling, an arm draped across his face with helpless mirth. 

“Don’t _worry_ Wendy! Wendy, Wendy, Wendy, I only want to _see._ ” He slid off the bed again and seized Will by the nape of his neck, pulling him in. His chin tilted up and pressed up against the Jokers chest, as the clown bowed his neck and gazed down. Will clamped his eyes shut and the Joker laughed triumphantly. 

“An empath! I knew it! Hahahaha, how delightful, how utterly delightful, hahahahaa!” 

Material groped at his eyelid, gloved fingers prying the left eye open. The manic smile lingered low on the horizon of his face, the dawning of a rabid sun, and in the cold space above, two mad orbs loomed, radiating pure insanity. 

Suspended in the intense rays, both his eyes slid open, and Will gasped, his psyche flooded. The hand at his face flicked away and his eyes stayed locked. A blade pushed against his abdomen. Will’s hand snapping up to halt the knife, _but those eyes, those eyes_ … his hand was on the hilt, resting over the Joker’s glove, _but_ _those eyes, those eyes_ …

_The world dances in the flames, rippling and burning and blistering and scorching… toxic clouds dribble over melting cities, the flowers scream, the pigeons shout obscenities; the mewling caws of humanity, just so many broken-necked birds with broken wings stumbling about on toe-less feet at the edge of a chasm of stretching biting teeth… he wants to dance along the shoreline of this fanged canyon, kicking the birds into the snapping maws… and he does… laughing louder and louder until he tumbles into the precipice himself, to leap and spin on the tips of those teeth, the world burning around him…_

…Will’s mouth stretches wide, laughter bubbling from his lungs, and together they guide the Joker’s knife into his flesh.

\- - -

‘ _Sir? Are you still in the Diamond District?’  
_

“Yes Alfred, why?”

_‘One of your homing beacons has activated in the East End. I have sent you the address.’  
_

“Thank you Alfred, I see it on my display now.” 

Batman landed on the top floor of a narrow building; rappelling the short distance to the landing of the fire escape below. An open window waited, curtains flapping the breeze, the lights turned out in the small apartment. Innate distrust climbing a gear, he scanned the room and the floor before stepping down into a crouch so as not to be backlit by the window. 

A small studio apartment lay beyond, kitchenette bedroom and sitting room, with two proper doors: an exit and, presumably, a washroom of some kind. The flat smelled of cheap coffee, the sour tang of dog, and the same awful aftershave Will Graham favoured. He dismissed the thought, as a popular brand, Will was not the only individual to sport the atrocious odour. More’s the pity. 

Other scents lingered above the permeated surfaces of the apartment; the hyaluronic acid and ceramides of the ointment the Joker used on his face, and the familiar iron tang of blood.

He prowled low, a batarang loosely gripped between his fingers, but the only figure in residence lay sprawled unconscious across the bed; one foot on the floor, masked and half dressed, dark red slashes across his torso, a dark puddle on the sheets. Hannibal crushed his teeth together; the prospect of his tenuous ally’s death releasing a bitter flavour. He clicked on a standing lamp, and in the light it cast saw the man’s chest still rose and fell. 

The breath hissed out quietly between his teeth, and he approached the wounded Mask, seeing the smile carved into his abdomen, the slashes under his ribs - eyes squeezed shut in laughter. Deep enough to need stitches, but the muscles hadn’t been completely severed, nor had organs been breached. Uncharacteristically restrained of the Joker. Perhaps because his own knife hadn’t made it passed the new Harley’s adipose tissue?

One limp hand held the beacon, and one leg was clipped in a modified bear trap; it hadn’t broken his ankle, another strange mercy from the Joker. Batman glared down at the injured man, a wary thrum in the back of his throat. He removed a glove and felt the man’s pulse: slow, steady and even. 

“I’m at the apartment. My informant has been injured, looks like the Joker’s work.”

_‘Should I call an ambulance sir?’_

“No, the wounds are… relatively minor. I can treat them myself.”

‘ _Oh.’_ A confused pause. _‘You hope he might still have information, if you can rouse him?’  
_

Alfred’s hesitation made a point, this was a break from his usual modus operandi, but he remembered the other Mask building up a fire as he recovered from paralysis, and found an inconvenient kernel of compassion, planted against all sense in the loam of his suspicion. 

Hannibal’s eyes landed on a slim hardback on the bedside table, and disparate pieces clicked into a satisfying picture; the seed germinated. 

“There does seem to be more to this story, Alfred. I’ll check in later.”

Setting water to boil on the stove, Batman gathered bowls and towels, located a first aid kit in the shower room, and began to tend to the Wendigo’s wounds.  
  
Hannibal had finished suturing the ‘eyes’ and was halfway through the ‘smile’, when the dark eyelids fluttered. 

“Easy, Will. I’ve nearly finished with your wounds. They’ll scar, but you’ll live. He wanted you to live.”

The man kept commendably still, eyes homing on Batman’s and finding some relief there. “You came.”

“You called.”

Rolling his head to look at his bedside cabinet, Will added, “And you know.”

“I find I am not particularly shocked.”

“I wanted to hide your grandmother’s book, after I activated the beacon… I couldn’t reach.”

“It’s your book now, and I hope you didn’t stretch too hard - I would have deduced your identity sooner rather than later. Though cloaking your scent was a clever distraction. How long have you known my identity, Will?”

“Since before I broke into your house to sabotage your boiler.”

Hannibal searched for the affront he should feel, discovering approval had usurped its position; a unique creature indeed. “I see.”

“I’d apologise, but we agreed to use them sparingly.”

“So we did.” The stitches complete, Hannibal tied off the knot, snipping the thread and cleaning the site with a final antiseptic wipe. “Can you tell me what happened here?” He stuck down a bandage and secured it around the edges. 

Will closed his eyes, then reached up to lift off his mask and pull back the cowl, freeing the dark main of curls and revealing a brow pinched in discomfort. When he opened his eyes again, the black smudges around his eyes accentuated the vivid aquamarine pools. 

“Can you help me get my leg out?”

Pouring half a vial of Victor Freeze’s endothermic formula on the lock securing the jaws of the trap, Batman shattered the now brittle shackle, and prized open the bear trap. 

Drawing his booted leg up to cradle it and scooting back on the bed, Graham looked exhausted. His suit had been slashed to ribbons above the waist, hanging in shreds around his chest, though it still clung to his arms like a wetsuit. He slipped off the boot and massaged his ankle, a welt and bruise already forming. 

“Where is your dog?” Batman asked, glancing around the flat, wondering if the Joker had taken the pet for his own.

“Buster stays with Mrs Biel down the stairs when I go out at night.” He chuckled wryly. “She thinks I’m a rent boy.” He glanced up, catching the crease of offence at the edge of Batman’s lips. “I haven’t disabused her of the notion. She was a woman of the night herself, back in her day.” 

Hannibal supposed it made a kind of sense – both were dangerous avenues to pursue, and in either case there was no guarantee of returning alive at the end of a night. He observed his patient begin to shiver. 

“Do you have fresh sheets? These will grow stiff and uncomfortable.”

The young man shook his head. “They’re in the laundry bag.”

“Get under your covers then. Do you have any tea? It’s a bit late for coffee. Or early.”

Will wrinkled his nose. “Maybe? Check the cupboard left of the stove.”

With water boiling again, Batman found half a box of green tea, and two chipped mugs. He heard Will struggling out of his Wendigo suit and kept his back turned to allow him the illusion of privacy in the tiny apartment. 

“A pity about your suit.” He observed as he heard it discarded on the floor. “I can’t imagine it’s easy to reproduce.”

“No.” The rustle of the covers, “but maybe someone would make me a couple of new ones in exchange for the novel material science I developed in making it.”

“A plumber and boiler man’s apprentice. It seems a waste of your talents.”

“That’s what the Price twins said. But it’s a good way to learn how things work.”

“And if you can create customer demand for them in the meantime…” He said it with levity, but couldn’t deny the pleasure in poking.

Behind him, Graham grunted, clearly unimpressed. “I thought you were over that.”

“It is rare that someone breaks into my house, rarer still that they survive the experience.” He took the water off the heat and poured it into the mugs, turned when he believed it was safe to do so.

The dark camouflage makeup around Will’s eyes had been partially wiped away, some transferred to the heels of his hands. Hannibal suspected the remainder would find itself on the pillow by morning. 

He placed the tea on Will’s bedside table and righted the armchair that lay on its back at the end of the bed. Will regarded it uncomfortably; evidently the Joker had repositioned it. Sitting in it now would not create good associations. An incongruous open space in the corner waited for its return, the only vacant position in a pocket-sized jigsaw puzzle, and Batman pushed it back. 

The folding chair he found in its stead creaked resentfully under his weight as he reached for his tea. “I keep my emotions well-stoppered, but you soaked them up regardless. How did you fare in the presence of the Joker? His spill everywhere.”

A giggle, quickly suppressed with a shudder and a grimace. That dry swallow again, and Will picked up his tea. “You gonna keep your mask on all night?”

“I wasn’t planning to stay all night.” 

Will looked down, plucking at a loose thread on the quilt, “Right.” Toneless.

“Tell me what happened with the Joker, Will.”

“I can try. But… I feel like _not_ thinking about it is the smartest move. The more I think on him, the more power I feel I give him. Influence.”

“There might be some truth to that, and I encourage you not to dwell too long on the encounter, but you will think of him anyway as you heal, you must – to process the experience. You only need tell me the once.”

Nodding, face turned away, Will recounted the bare bones of the story with a voice that wavered between dispassionate and self-recriminating. “You saw the bear trap, it caught me as I came through the window. Two thugs, they had guns. The Joker, he asked me a bunch of questions… he’s obsessed with you.” he shuddered. “Said you were best friends... hah. Hahahaha. Hahahahaha! Sorry, sorry, it’s just you… you _helped him cut his face off_! Hahahaha!”

Hannibal reached over and took the mug from Will’s shaking hand, as he lost himself to the laughter, eyes clamped shut. He put both their mugs down on the side table and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Will. Breathe Will.”

“Hahahahahaha-” Gasp “Aah-hahahahah!”

He rested a heavy hand on the man’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “It’s alright Will, everything will be fine.”

“Haha, hoo, hoo, oh will it now?” He wiped the tears from his eyes, little aftershock giggles rippling through him, then he sagged, fingers lightly grazing his new bandages. “Oh fuck. I never should have come to Gotham.”

“No, you probably shouldn’t have. Why did you?”

“I wanted to save lives.”

“Did you?” Hannibal asked. “Wendigos are not known for their benevolence. Did you come to the crime capital of America, dressed in a vigilante costume, to save lives? Or did you come to a city where you would inevitably find men so bad, that killing them felt good?” 

“It feels _just._ ” He hissed back.

“Then why not be a policeman?” 

The other man scoffed. “I was.”

“Oh?”

“The system’s broken. Maybe it never really worked, but now, it’s a joke.” He blinked, terror and mirth welling in his eyes, and then he crumpled into laughter once again. 

Torn between apprehension and intrigue, Batman watched Will battle with himself, wondering if he would later come to regret not taking this chance to slit his throat. He should, logically. This porous, intelligent, violent man could turn into something as dangerous and unpredictable as the Joker. But, maybe Hannibal could influence the creature as he changed; feed the caterpillar, whisper into the chrysalis. Maybe what emerged would be neither Joker nor Wendigo nor Batman… maybe the Wendigo would surprise even him.

“The Joker knows where you live now. Perhaps it would be safer for you to stay at mine.”

Will snorts, a more natural form of mirth for the young man. “If he was going to kill me, he had all the opportunity he needed tonight. Thanks, but I’ve got my dog to look after, and I’m not about to start hiding.”

“As you wish. Just know, my door is open to you.”

The eyes stay averted, but a tremor of confusion travelled from his brows to his fingers, before dissipating into the tightly clenched sheets.

“Thanks.”

\- - -

Will stayed awake after Batman left, fingers tracing the edges of the bandages. The Joker had cut him up. Batman had stitched him up. 

He was marked by them both, outside – and more troubling – inside.

He checked the clock on the microwave, eight ten. A bit early for Mrs Biel, but she would allow him this once. 

Gingerly pulling on a pair of grey sweatpants, he zipped up a hoodie over his bare chest and walked tenderly to the door, supporting himself on various walls and items of furniture in the crowded space. The building’s halls were hardly an arms-width anyway, so he made it down the musty corridors and stairwell with only a thin film of sweat for his efforts. 

Before he even lifted his fist to knock, the click and scratch of little claws on the plastic tiled floors behind the door preceded Buster’s excited snuffling and chuffing. “Hey buddy.” Will cooed, before knocking twice on the door. 

She arrived faster than he would have expected, in a threadbare blue dressing-gown, a hand in her messy grey curls. Buster leapt through as the crack widened enough for him to do so, and danced a little jig around his feet. Mrs Biel scowled, rubbing her eyes. “Jesus, Will, you knock like a cop, you know that?”

“You’ve told me before, sorry.”

“Pfft. Gave me a heart-attack. Oh, shit, you don’t look too good. Hard night?”

“Long night. Reckoned I’d relieve you of Buster before I sleep for, like, a day.” He tried to laugh, it was a broken thing that flapped miserably between them before falling to the floor.

“If you want me to hang on to him for longer… I can let you rest. You can come get him when you wake?”

“No, that’s sweet of you, but I’ll sleep better with him around.”

A tough old bird, she rarely looked at him with pity – it was why he liked her. Today, however, concern did cloud her eyes. Time to wrap up the conversation. He plastered the easy smile onto his face, “Thanks again, let me know if your pipes act up again.” 

She took the hint. “Hang on then.” A little bustle of activity behind the half open door, and she reappeared with his tupperware boxes and dog bowls in a plastic bag. 

“See you tomorrow night?”

“Might have a few nights off.” Nonchalant.

“Well, you know I’ll take him whenever. He’s a good boy.”

“Thanks again Mrs B.”

Normally, at this point, he would scoop Buster up as he walked away, but his lacerated stomach muscles would not permit it, so he clicked his tongue and said “Come on boy,” letting Buster scuttle along behind him, mildly confused but as enthusiastic as ever. 

With the ratty blinds down and the dog snoring next to him on the bed, he felt about as secure as a jewel in a paper safe, but it was something in his weakened state. Sleeping where two known psychopathic murderers know you stay was never going to be easy. 

_No, I won’t kill you just yet Wendy,_ the voice whispers as he bobs along the edge of consciousness, retreating into hypnagogia, _two body problems eventually become predictable, but the three-body problem is a creature of chaos, hahahaha! We’re going to have so much fun!’  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next week we have some more of the Joker's POV, and a new villain makes an appearance (dun dun DUNN)


	6. Chapter 6

Will ascended the wide stone steps of the manor house as the sun set behind him, his shadow advancing ahead of him, leading the way. Alfred waited at the door, ramrod straight with a poker face to match.

“Mr Graham, sir. How nice to see you again.”

“You too, Mr Pennyworth. Tell me, does his lordship make a habit of sending for people with cars?”

“Not as such, sir. And please, do not feel you have to address me as Mister Pennyworth.”

“Oh, come now Mr Pennyworth, informality would never do.” 

Alfred sighed, and Will very much enjoyed the reproving eyebrow raised over a stony eyeball. “If you must, it is in fact Major Pennyworth.”

Will nodded. “Very well, Major. Won’t you take me to your commanding officer?”

Alfred swept away glacially, and Will smirked at the polished floors as he followed the man through the house, wondering if his reflection found the world as ridiculous as he did.

After announcing him stiffly, and a brief moment of scrutiny, Alfred left him in the library. Hannibal stood from his seat beside a leather-topped desk, an academic paper open on a laptop, another printed out and being cruelly cut apart by a red pen.

“You summoned me.” Will said by way of greeting when Hannibal gestured to one of the leather armchairs by the fire.

“Brandy? Scotch?”

“Scotch, thanks.” Fine, free whiskey was reasonable recompense for an impromptu kidnapping. If a knock on the door and a chauffer with a written invitation counted as abduction.

“I thought you might like to see the first prototype of your new suit.”

Confusion scrunches Will’s brows. “Your Fox guy managed to make me a new suit in five days?”

“Closer to seven days, if you consider he worked some night too.”

“Still… it took me… months.”

“Analysing and reverse engineering material technology is far simpler than inventing new materials. Especially with the resources at my disposal, and a mind like Fox’s, when he gets excited about an idea.”

“What about the adsorption? That takes at least thirty-six hours.”

“The supercomputer found a catalyst.”

Regarding Hannibal dubiously as he busied himself around a drinks cabinet, Will reminded him, “I’ll be trusting my life to that suit.”

“His equipment has kept me alive thus far.”

Tossing his eyebrows up his forehead, he accepted a crystal cut glass with its two fingers of amber liquid. “Can’t argue with that I suppose.” He lifted his drink to Hannibal who mirrored the gesture, and they both wet their tongues with fire. His lips came away from the glass in a secretive smirk. “Do I get to see the Bat Cave?”

“No need.” Hannibal replied, as smooth as the brandy. “The suit is over there.”

Once pointed out to him, on a chair across the desk from where Hannibal had been sitting, the box stood out from the rest of the room as something foreign; the plain brown cardboard incongruous with the carefully chosen aesthetics and little details of ornamentation. He stood and approached it, stepping partially free of the cloud of caustic humour that had been following him for days.

His fingers reached for the box but hesitated. “What- what do you want for it?”

“Nothing. I’ve had my attorney file on your behalf for Intellectual Property. It’s with the patent office now. No one will be able to weaponise the material without your authority, and the suits we’re making you are ‘off the books’, as with my own supplies.”

Turning away from the box to squint suspiciously at his new benefactor, “What’s the catch?”

“There’s no catch, no debt. I can’t say I exactly trust you, so I don’t expect you to suddenly trust me. But for now it appears we are colleagues of a kind, and I would have my collaborators properly equipped.”

“So it serves your interests.”

“It serves both our interests. And, relatively, costs neither of us a thing.”

Will returned to the box with a slow nod, slowly moving to lift the lid, the moment weightier on his shoulders than he would like. Neatly folded inside waited the blue-black skin of the Wendigo, remade. Lifting it out he began to sense the differences, rubbing at the shoulders and chest pieces curiously.

“The armour plating has been upgraded. Fox uses a lighter material with higher tensile strength and lower brittleness.” Hannibal gazed into the fire. “The measurements are the same as your old suit, which seemed to fit you well.”

Words became elusive concepts at the misty edges of Will’s mind. He carefully folded the garment and replaced it in its box, carried it back to the chair with him and sat with it on his lap. He too let his gaze rest in the fire.

“Thank you,” he finally managed, glad to find the only suitable words, but feeling as though an uncomfortable admission lay in them.

“You’re quite welcome Will. If you don’t mind my saying, you appear to have a difficult relationship with gifts.”

Seeking refuge in his glass again, Will fought the urge to clench his teeth. He had nothing else to repay Hannibal with, so he could at least offer him the truth. A hand travelled to his abdomen without conscious direction. “I received my first gift about a week ago. In here.” He gestured at the room with his chin.

“The book?”

“The book. I mean, I probably got a few presents as a baby or a toddler. But… yeah. In memory.”

“It is often the sentiment behind a gift that carries the greater meaning. Were you poor in gifts but rich in sentiment?”

“Just… generally poor, I think.” He snorted gently.

“Hmm.”

Will noticed Hannibal notice the attention he was paying his abdominal wound, the gentle caressing, and he let his hand drop away.

_Yes, it has been a good week for gifts._  
  
  


\- - -

The Joker paces the periphery of the pen staring down at his big mean ol’ piggies, how they squeal! Hoohoo they’re noisy little oinkers. An angry breed, but he likes them mean. Not that he cares for swine, particularly, they’re hairy and smelly and _ugly._ He shudders as he looks into their soulless little eyes. They’re _apparently_ close to humans, genetically or mentally… he really doesn’t see it.

He turns to regard his worthless henchmen, ranged against the far wall, as far from the pigpen as they get. They seem fine corralling an individual pig, but as a herd they freak the boys out. But then, some people find clowns scary. The Joker titters. Some people are just big ‘fraidy-cats.

Not that Wendy-go-go though, no. That hungry little myth, mmm, he might not _shine_ with darkness like the Bat does, but he _reflects_ it with a glossy sheen. “No, no, no.” He raps his gloved knuckles against the crown of his fine green hair. He’s not _reflecting._ “Mirrors are everywhere.” He jabs a finger at the ceiling, striding up and down the walkway between the pigpen and the control panels. The goons’ eyes follow him uncomfortably.

Wendy absorbs people _inside_ his spongy little brain, and in that moment _becomes_ an alternate version. He can see why the Rrripper has an itty bitty batty crush on the fledgling, it’s what will make squishy little Wendy such a useful toy. “Mirrors are boring.” The Joker exclaims, eyes flicking to his men. Their faces are painted white like his, some with big red smiles and colourful marks around their eyes; they shift uneasily. “Oh, hahahahaha – not _you_ guys. You’re not pretty enough to be mirrors.” He giggles and pitches them a kiss. One of them winces. “You’re more like… a scrawny little brat’s drawing! _Mummy I drawed a clown._ Heee heee heee.”  
His men smile unhappily. _Why_ is he always surrounded by such _dreary_ individuals? At least the pigs seem to quieten when he talks, even if he’s not speaking _to_ them. How nice, that they find his presence soothing. He feels a beat of affection for them.

Oh sure, they’d tear him limb from limb in a moment if they had the chance… but that’s part of their charm. Pretty much their only charm really. He wrinkles his nose.

The burly Sicilian brutes he has training these hogs guide one back into the main pen with cattle-prods. Some of the other pigs rush over to snuffle for weaknesses, but the newly conditioned beast snarls at them defensively and they retreat.

They really do stink. And training them is taking _so long_ , aren’t they meant to be smart animals? Bats is sure to find him again if this all takes much longer. He can’t have _two_ parties crashed early by his Batman; that would be _embarrassing_. Luckily, he has just the thing to keep him distracted. “Come on boys, grab your glad rags, let’s go light a fire.”  


  
It used to smell terrible down here, now it smells fine, just fine. It’s everywhere else that smells terrible, heehee, worse than usual anyway.

Whatever ugly facemasks the guards in this maze are wearing don’t do diddly against his joker gas, all they do is obstruct the beautiful sight of mouths curling up and muffle the sounds of the final rattily death giggles. He knows, these facemasks are there to mimic their boss, because individuality is _not_ something to encourage in your minions. Assuming any of them really exist, of course. If they are all just extensions of the self, maybe it would be good to let them indulge in some self-expression once in a while. He’ll ponder that later, for now he has a demon to meet... or just its severed head perhaps. 

The dried out sewer passages open up into a large central underground chamber, crudely and artificially lit; in desperate need of a new lighting director. A space like this is wasted with these hollow bulbs; no drama, no cinematography. Eyes dancing across the spidery structure being erected, and its contact points with the roof, the premise behind the construction seem fairly transparent. _Interesting, very interesting._ Good to know really. Pretty too; he hasn’t seen this many explosives in one place since, ooh, 2013? Definitely not a wasted trip. His gaze tracks in to where ants scrabble about on walkways, and one enormous brute strides back and forth, watching them work, his broad back bulging with muscles and covered in some red and black tattoo. That could, conceivably be demonic… if those curly things are horns.

The Joker gestures for one of his henchmen to pass him the megaphone. At least his boys don’t _look_ scared, in fact, they cut a rather imposing bunch. He’s left the Sicilians to guard the pigs and brought his best acrobats for this mission, there’s always the hope he’ll be meeting someone with some flare after all.

“Roll up! Roll up, the circus is in town, and you are invited to play! Or is that, parley?” Ey, ey, ey… echoes around them. The Joker is sure he used to have a top hat for these occasions.

The great beast of a man leaps over a railing and lands heavily on their level. The Joker’s not sure if the ground actually shakes, or if he’s only wishing it would. He laughs gleefully as the hulking figure runs at them with surprising speed. He braces his legs and opens his arms, waiting for a hug from a speeding train, and greets him, “Brother!”

The monster slows, the spurt of speed smoothly shedding its energy and becoming a graceful stride. He is taller even that the Joker, at nearly seven foot tall.

“What is the meaning of this?” A low growl, lightly muffled through the mask that squats over the lower half of his face. The vertical cylinders sharpen as they meet in the middle, creating the illusion of ridged metal teeth where his mouth should be.

“Might you be the Demon’s Head?”

“The Demon’s Head has fallen. The Great Red Dragon rises. Why do you call me brother?” He comes to a stop in front of the Joker, a mountain of muscle and sinew. No hug after all, what a shame. He keeps his arms outstretched all the same.

“Oh but we _are_ brothers, brothers-in-arms, you wish to see Gotham fall, do you not?”

The narrowed eyes take in his ragtag gang before returning. “I know of you. You call yourself ‘The Joker’.”

The Joker sketches a perfect tidy bow. This is what his purple suits are tailored for, after all. “I’m honoured.” His hands regroup at the front of his shirt, gripping the edges of his suit and rocking on the soles of his feet.

“You shouldn’t be.” There’s a sneer behind the mask, he’s sure of it.

“Oh, hahaha! You shouldn’t believe the whispers, apart from the ones in you head of course, heehee. I’m often under-estimated, over-estimated, misunderestimated, nobody really understands why I do what I do. Do you think you do?”

“I think you’re a mad dog.”

Delightful, “ _Rruff_!” He barks out, and giggles to himself. “And others would think you a mad dragon, red or otherwise, but all the same, if a mad dog’s teeth are buried in your enemy’s flank, you might still appreciate its involvement.”

“Not if its slavering jaws turn in my direction.”

The Joker sighs mournfully. So much distrust. He stands on his tippy-toes and leans in to get his face as close to the mask as he can. “Am I currently frothing at the mouth? No.” He snaps his teeth lightly, and sinks back down to the balls of his feet. “I’m here to tell you that the Batman _knows_ you’re down here, and what you have planned with this here, hmm, setup.” He spirals a finger to demonstrate the structure behind the dragon man.

“And how does he know this? How do you know this?”

Ninjas have slowly been slipping out of the shadows around them for a few minutes… _Ninjas_ , hah! If they were real ninjas he wouldn’t see them at all! He gestures at the would-be stealth warriors. “Clearly some of your _dragonettes_ aren’t as discreet as you might like to believe. There’s talk. Above ground.” He extends a long finger towards the cavern ceiling, his smile stretching dangerously. “Quiet for now, but you know how whispers are.” He brings the megaphone to his lips, “They echo!”

The word travels back and forth, exchanged in mischievous snatches between the gossipy walls of chamber. The Dragon snarls breathily through the mask and places the edge of his hand gently on the Joker’s shoulder. It’s a warning, sure, but he appreciates the intimacy. “My men are ready to die for the cause.”

Rubbing his cheek against the hairy arm, he keeps his eyes locked on the angry buzz of the Dragon’s gaze, “ _Die_ for the cause? Maybe, but, heh, dying’s easy. Are they ready to _button their lips_ for the cause? Not so much.”

The forehead wrinkles in consternation, then smooths out again. The Dragon removes his hand from the Joker’s shoulder, regarding the white smear left on his arm disapprovingly. “Your 'assistance' is not needed to defeat the Batman, I welcome him. He may challenge me at any time.”

The Joker tilts his head, and raises a hand to stroke at the Dragon’s mask. His wrist is caught before he can make contact. The meaty hand could probably crack the bone with grip-strength alone, but his finger is curled out and pointing at the mask, which is good enough. “You really shouldn’t hide your scars you know… I paint mine white to represent their purity… you lock yours away, but it’s our scars that give us strength.”

“What do you know of my scars?” The Dragon rumbles quietly, an intimate question, for his ears only.

He matches the tone of voice. “I know you’re a _biter._ ” The Joker snaps his teeth again. “I know you rend flesh with teeth when you’re becoming Mr Dragon. I know you’re not wearing the mask to protect some secret identity. I know the scars on your face mark you as special, as worthy, as incumbent, awaiting ascension, but you fear your scars make you weak, inferior, and so you _hide_ them behind a mask.”

“I do not feel inferior.” The assurance is given with a further tightening on the Joker’s wrist. Ouchie. Would Batman sign his cast? Do casts come in purple?

“Hee hee, maybe not physically. Maybe not intellectually. But in some fundamental way, you feel shame.” The Joker allows casual disinterest to caremlise his next words. “But by all means, convince me I’m wrong, tell me of the true rationale behind your facial covering.”

“I need tell you nothing.” The Dragon roughly releases his wrist, and the Joker steps back in victory, massaging lightly, knowing he has the truth of it; a weakness there. His feet carry him in little figures of eight, one arm folded behind his back, the other held up before him to conduct his words.

“You _may_ be able to vanquish the Dark Knight when he comes a-knocking,” _doubtful, his Bats is unkillable, a constant in the universe…_ “but I suspect your broader schemes are still a little way away from completion humm? And the Batman has allies now, perhaps you should nip this in the bud, before you have weeds sprouting up everywhere!”

“What agenda do you serve?”

“Me?” He points to himself in a parody of innocence, pausing mid-stride. “I just want to see Batman dethroned, his kingdom all in rubble, you know, the usual.” He stretches the word out so it sounds like ‘Use-you-all’. 

“You have no delusions about ruling Gotham?”

“ _Ruling it_? Hahaha! Why would I want to _rule_ anything? So many responsi _bilities_! No no no, I just want a little ‘authenticity’ around here. You know. Too much corruption and deceit, very dull. Impossible to have a real conversation with anybody. If you want to blow it up, be my guest, I’ll applaud you from the wings and makes s’mores. But I _do_ recommend you dispose of the Bat before he disrupts your plans.” He sighs dramatically, examining his gloves as though they have fingernails to clean. “I always underestimate him, and he’s always a party-pooper, a thorn in my side, a blight. You though, you might actually have the resources to get him, so _go get him_ , I say!”  


The Joker waves his hands in a shooing motion, then turns in a wide circle to take a last look at the busy worker ants around him. How pretty it would be to see all this go boom. He’s bored of talking now though. He thinks this dragon leader might have a few too many marbles, his personal madness as dull as the ditch water that used to flow through this place.

“Anyway, that’s my contribution to your little war, long reign The Great Red Dragon and all that. I’ll leave it in your capable hands. Toodles!” He fetches a party whistle from his pocket and blows it, the colourful proboscis unfurling towards the Dragon’s impassive face. His acrobats take their cue to do a couple of flips and cartwheels and the Joker throws some confetti in the air behind him as he leaves.  
His men cover their retreat with their semi-automatics, but the Joker knows the man won’t try to kill him just yet. He seems like the type to think patience is a virtue, but patience and hesitation are bedfellows, and nothing that hesitates lives for long.

Does the Bats actually know about the Dragon’s little operation? Who can say? If not, he will soon, so it’s not a fib… more a prediction, or a truth that travelled back in time. Better than a regular truth really, a time-travelling truth; a tachyon truth. What a rare and precious gift he has given the mountain man and the pet dragon riding under his skin. 

\- - -

Bane prowled the walkways as his disciples fortified the scaffold and dug further under Gotham’s bedrock, crumbling tainted material that it was. The unpleasant clown had disrupted operations, distracted from the work and sent fibres of unease sewing into his skin. He believed The Ripper to be a worthy adversary, not just any man could kill Ra's al Ghul – even if the Demon’s Head had been corrupted by weakness near the end. The Great Red Dragon had no such corruption, and would devour the Ripper as he would devour Gotham, and all its sin.

The prospect of Batman allying himself with others troubled him. Trained by Ra’s, he could no doubt lead an effective force if he chose to. _If_. He couldn’t trust the word of a madman, but complacency was a cardinal sin in a general, along with pride.

Casting one last severe eye over the progress above, the Dragon stalked to the nearest gate and signalled the assassin stationed there. The Great Red Dragon growled quietly through Bane’s teeth, “Take three of your men. Find out if there is truth to the jester’s ravings. Ensure you are not seen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Well, things always get worse before they get better, am I right? ;)
> 
> Thanks for reading, next week's chapter is more Hannibal and Will centric.
> 
> Let me know if you have any thoughts, I always love hearing from you guys x


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just FYI, this one gets a little NSFW towards the end!

The day had passed with stifling slowness. Hannibal stood in the abandoned west wing of the manor as the sun tunnelled below the horizon, casting its red and amber light over the white dust-cloth draped furniture. Alfred knew not to bother him in the quarters his parents had occupied. The Wendigo, apparently, did not.

The ice tinkled in his Nocino as he raised the glass to the room. “How is your new suit working for you?”

The answer came from the ceiling. “The catalyst appears to have worked.”

“As sticky as ever?”

“Stickier, perhaps.”

Hannibal brought the glass to his lips for a chaste sip and then tilted his head to look up at the ceiling. Will’s cerulean eyes gazed down from directly above, the whites and pale blue strikingly pale against the shadows wrapped around him.

“You are permitted ingress through the front door, I hope you know.”

“Well, I’d rather not put your butler out.”

“Would you care to enlighten me as to how you keep getting into my house?”

“I think I’ll keep the rest of my trade secrets for now.” He rolled from the ceiling and dropped to the floor, a mere pace away from Hannibal.

Standing from his landing crouch he straightened to his full height, nearly eye-level with Hannibal, and they regarded each other a moment. Lecter kept the mask of his Human-Suit as inscrutable as possible. Will’s eyes roved his face, Hannibal felt them test and sample every line and curve, but kept his own firmly on the transitory pupils. Beyond the window the last of the colour was sucked from the sky, and the room darkened around them.

“I do have something to share with you though.” Will murmured around a smile that was turning up at the edges of his lips. From this proximity, with the extendable razor sharp claws Fox had embedded in the Wendigo’s gloves, Hannibal’s insides could be splashed across the floor with a flick of Will’s wrist. An interesting aroma rose from the exposed jut of his neck, spicy and dangerous, reckless; it went beyond the mischievous callousness that had billowed from him that first night.

Whatever this had become for the Wendigo, it had moved far from indifference. The Joker’s influence seeped from his pores with this piquant new threat sweat, that captivating madness adhering beneath the empath’s skin. He had smelled it before, when he had patched up his wounds and fed him green tea, when he had sent for him and gifted him with a new suit, some aspect of the Joker’s reflection lodged in the man’s mind. A wound which, left untreated, could quickly grow septic, infecting the delicious grey matter behind the mask. The clown’s madness was changing Will, and being changed by Will, a new kind of material science; what properties would the exotic blend exhibit once the change had stabilised?

“I have something to give you too.” Hannibal hummed, his own smile exposing the tips of his teeth. He raised a finely manicured nail to run along the edge of Will’s jaw, seeking the rasp of stubble that had been recently shorn away. Will rotated his jaw into the contact slightly, his mouth sliding provocatively with the motion.

Tilting forward at the waist, Will raised his chin to whisper into Hannibal’s ear, and Hannibal allowed this by canting his own head to better receive his words.

“Me first.” Will whispered, exhalation hot against his ear, and for a moment he lingered there, letting Hannibal inhale him, perhaps scenting him in turn. The antlers curved back out of sight, but it would only take a twist of the Wendigo’s neck to gouge Hannibal’s eye from its socket.

Hannibal waited with a slow steady pulse, curious as to what shape the opening gambit might take in this peculiar new game. Proprioception, controlling heart rate and breathing had all been an early part of basic training for the League of Assassins, yet it did not escape Lecter that the Wendigo’s proximity exerted some kind of pull on his body.

The long moment of Will’s breath stirring the hair that lay around his ear was supplemented with sound, “I wasn’t the only one slipping through your defences at dusk.”

The position of Will’s face close to his own left little room for Hannibal to turn his head, but he rotated as far as he could, coming almost cheek to cheek with the intruder. His own severe cheekbones touching the sharp edges of the Wendigo’s mask, “What did you see?”

“At least four. They were good; silent as ghosts – as silent as you – moving like shadows, without any light to cast them. They entered shortly before I did, they’ve already been in here, ooh, twenty minutes now. I wonder what damage they might have done in that time?”

Lifting a hand to splay his finger over Will’s shoulder, Hannibal matched his whisper. “And where, prey tell, did _they_ penetrate my security?”

“A garden well. I gather it was impermanently sealed?”

It was rare Hannibal found himself cursing his sentimentality, but that well had played a part in forging a fundamental part of his personality, filling it with stone and cement felt like it would block a vital tributary to history.

Drawing back and up, Hannibal met the amused curiosity in Will’s eyes and glowered at his own reflection distorted across the Wendigo’s face. “I see.” He released Will’s shoulder and marched from the suite and the wing, towards his own chambers. Lifting his watch he tapped on its surface, “Alfred, I believe we have intruders. Enact Protocol Three and keep clear of the cave.”

He couldn’t hear the Mask behind him, but his intriguing scent accompanied Hannibal through the wide halls of this ancestral home. When he paused at the bedroom door and glanced to one side, he could see Will in the periphery of his vision, motionless behind him as though engaged in a private game of _What's the time Mr Wolf_?

“Am I to proceed on the understanding that you are with me on this endeavour?”

The smooth jaw received a musing rub. “On this endeavour? Why not!”

“How reassuring.” Hannibal returned with a cynical eyebrow, but pushed his door open and led Will passed the king sized bed and into the dressing room that held the colourful mosaic of his wardrobe.

Hannibal regarded himself in the mirror for a brief biometric scan, then tugged a latch in the frame and a door swung open to reveal the tight confines of the lift. The dark mask concealed much of Will’s face, but mirth squeezed with him into the small space next to Hannibal. The door, when it swung shut, showed the dressing room beyond; a two-way mirror, its twin revealed in the cave below, at the terminus of their long descent.

Through that one way glass, the screens of the supercomputer flashed with an error sign, Alfred apparently wasting no time in locking down all networked systems. Beyond this, no obvious signs of incursion presented themselves.

“If they’re in here, we give ourselves away as soon as we step from the elevator.”

Through his shirt, Hannibal felt a claw stroke at the sensitive flesh of his side. “What’s the alternative? We just stay all cosy in here?”

Shifting position so he could make eye contact with Will, and brushing against his hip as he did so, Hannibal strove to maintain a flirtatious edge to his retort, while in truth he was more concerned by the potential breach in security, finding the Wendigo’s attempts to distract him improperly timed. “I thought perhaps we might try to maintain some element of surprise. I doubt my entrance will surprise them, but they might not expect yours. If they’re there, I’ll draw them out; you can wait until they’re visible.”

The fevered sweetness of the Joker’s recklessness faded slightly as Hannibal impressed his own practicality into Will’s mirrors, in its place a fresh tang of self-preservation, salt and citrus. Hannibal could only hope the half-life of such an impression would last the duration of their current challenge.

Hope wasn’t a variable Hannibal cared to rely upon. Coming to a decision, he stepped from the lift, keeping the swing of the door offhandedly minimalistic. He walked smartly to the equipment drawers, and selected a few accessories, some of which he raised to test with disarming nonchalance. Finding the infrared goggles that had become redundant with the augmented technology of his helmet, he glanced around the room casually. Satisfying himself that there were indeed four intruders currently hanging onto the foundations of the house, spiders squatting in the dark, he crossed to the fuse box and tripped the master switch.

Absolute darkness fell around him. The goggles were heavy and awkward on his face, designed to fit over the mask, but tolerable given the circumstances. The spiders acted quickly, dropping from their positions with practiced movements, encroaching with a synchronised strategy.

They didn’t fear the dark, and their training betrayed them as the League. They were trying to leave the cave and not engage him: reconnaissance only then. Well, where was the fun in that? The assassins could move blindly through mapped terrain, but they could not predict the movements of an unseen entity who moved as quietly as they did. Cutting across in a diagonal, a bishop to a pawn, Hannibal approached, ducked and twisted. The ninja’s senses warned him of an approaching mass, but his throat turned to meet the blade, and was severed before he could draw breath.

Even with Hannibal catching his weight and lowering him to the floor, his goggles showed the other assassins turning toward the brief gurgle of air escaping through the slippery slit, and a stiffening in their glowing postures.

Whatever their orders, they were still brothers in arms, and sought to regroup under a threat. Hannibal watched as the three remaining corners of their square started to draw towards an invisible middle point. He stepped into the path of the second assassin.

From the direction of the lift came a concussive slam and a rattle, followed by another. Will Graham had finally grown bored and discovered he was trapped; Hannibal smiled in the dark.

Partially distracted by the attempts at forced entry, it took his next target a fraction longer than it should have to realise someone stood between him and his brothers. This one had enough air already in his lungs to let out a low grunt when Hannibal’s scalpel punctured his pelvic cavity. His hands came around to grip Hannibal’s wrists, but too much damage had already been inflicted, and he didn’t have the strength to resist as Hannibal lifted the blade up and up through the abdominal cavity.

The pounding of the elevator door continued, a slow drumming in the darkness, as Hannibal spun to meet the two remaining assassins who had established his position and were circling around him. They struck simultaneously, and dodging both their blows and blocking an arm as it came round, a concurrent kick to the side of Hannibal’s head knocked the goggles away, and they were all fighting blind.  


\- - -

Suit bracing him up against the walls of the small lift, the Wendigo kicked and kicked, feeling the locking mechanism give a little more each time. It was a good outlet for his irritation at being duped. _Son._ Thud. _Of._ Thud. _A._ Thud. _bitch!_ Thud.

Finally, with a shriek of giving metal and a clatter as some integral part of the doorframe shore free, the door canted open and Will shouldered his way out. He stalked over in the direction of the box where Hannibal had killed the power, slowing as he sensed the cave wall approaching. Behind him, across the platform, he could hear the sounds of a fight in progress; huffing breaths and the meaty slaps of blows landed and blows blocked. Three in the fight, he would wager. Gingerly removing a glove and slowly waving a hand before the wall in what – he hoped – was the right direction, his groping fingers found the cold edge of the fuse box. Cautious finger pads felt the switches all aligned in their down position, bar one at the left edge, pointing upwards in a rude gesture. He flipped it down.

Pulling his glove back on and finding the sudden light nearly as blinding as the dark had been, his eyes adjusted in time to see the heel of Hannibal’s hand obliterate the cartilage of one assassin’s nose. As he staggered back the other leapt in and wrapped one arm around Hannibal’s throat, who caught the other arm as came round to threaten his eyes.

Whip in hand with ingrained automaticity, the length of black nylon unfurled with a snap that cut through the black fabric of the ninja’s head wrap, leaving a bloody slash and an exposed ruin of an ear. The man stumbled back without sound and turned to regard this new enemy, as Hannibal retrieved the grapple-gun clipped to his Italian leather belt, and fired it into the flank of the man whose nose he had just broken.

The remaining assassin raised a gloved hand to the bloodied side of his face, turned a quick look to where Hannibal was hauling in his comrade, then fired his own grapple up and swung out towards the exit of the cave, retreating in a series of wide arcs, beyond Will’s ability to pursue.

Hannibal watched the assassin escape, as the ensnared assassin writhed soundlessly with the hooks embedded in the meat of his thigh. Will took a moment to properly look at the Ripper, now that the immediate danger had passed, and found him to be artfully and liberally doused with blood. How bizarre it was to see so much blood on the human disguise. As the Wendigo approached, re-coiling his whip, he found he rather liked it. 

“You tried to trap me in the elevator.” He accused. The former surgeon retracted the grapple, its mechanical barbs jumping back into their housings and tearing flesh in the process. Despite himself, their ninja screamed, before returning to his angry panting.

“And yet you still provided the element of surprise, and all is well.”

“Is it? One of them got away.”

Crouching down and digging his fingers into the thigh wound, Hannibal gripped and pinched the ends of the severed artery. The ninja hissed, glaring, hands coming down to try and fight the invasion.

“I wouldn’t.” The doctor advised blandly, and the ninja hesitated, already trying to breathe through the blood pouring from his nose. “I don’t mind too much about the one that got away,” Hannibal resumed his conversation with Will. “They already know who I am, else they wouldn’t have found this place. More important: we have to keep this one alive long enough to give us information.”

“Can you do it?”

“I can prolong his death, certainly, but I’ll not be able to do much else while I’m doing so. Perhaps you could provide the additional stimulus required to loosen his tongue.”

“Stimulus?” Uncertainty crept into his voice. “You mean, torture.”

“You enjoy inflicting pain, there’s no denying that to me. You need your rationale, very well, how’s this: The League of Assassins believe in restoring ‘balance’ by engineering the destruction of the most gluttonous societies throughout history. In today's world, that would be Gotham City. If the League is here, they are preparing for Gotham’s ruin.”

Circling round to see Hannibal’s face and assess the voracity of this statement, Will looked down again to judge the thin strip of personality visible through the ninja’s zukin. The righteous defiance indicated the story was true.

“Well, shit.” Will replied, and crouched down. “How the fuck do you justify that? All the innocents that would die?”

“There are no innocents.” Came the heavily accented response.

“That’s a mighty cynical view point.”

Hannibal growled from his position at the man’s leg. “Could you perhaps stick to the more relevant and less philosophical aspects while he’s still conscious. Where is their base? Who’s leading them these days? What are they planning? That sort of thing?”

A faint cough, or perhaps a laugh, from the fading man. “You don’t know. You don’t know. He lied.”

“Who lied?”

“You don’t know.” The man repeated, and Will extended his claws to threaten the man, but fresh defiance flashed behind his gaze. A faint crack from the masked jaw preceded the same eyes rolling up as convulsions started, and after a few short moments, the body stilled forever.

A darker patch soaked into the ninja’s zukin, above the mouth, and Hannibal leaned in for a sniff, his nose wrinkling in distaste as he sat up again. “Cyanide. Things have certainly changed since my day.”

“You were a ninja?” Will asked, then, “They’re traditionally Japanese. I thought you trained in the Himalayas?”

“The League are an international organisation, generally preferring to occupy mountain lairs. The hostile temperatures and low oxygen content at high altitudes affords their warriors greater stamina when fighting in a more benign environment.”

“How do you compare, growing soft in the lowlands for so long?”

Hannibal began another monologue, this time about the benefits of a hypobaric chamber sequestered somewhere in his mansion, and Will’s attention drifted to the bloody body below him, and the two other mangled corpses spilling across the floor... 

...It’s really not fair. He didn’t get to kill anything at all. All dressed up and nowhere to go; plenty to share, but Hannibal kept it all to himself. _Selfish. Spoilt rich kid. Fucking typical._

It’s hard to stay angry with him, when he’s so pretty painted red. Like a shining beacon, calling to him, the colour of warnings and come-hither lipstick, flashy and primal, searing against his senses. The only life left in the place, the only warm pumping thing, already glossy with blood, but the blood will grow tacky and lose its bright sheen. If only Hannibal could stay that way, shiny with blood, kept in a flowing river of blood that never dried... perhaps he could cut a hole in his head, and one in his leg, and the blood would flow down his face, down his body, and back in through his shin, a self-replenishing fountain of blood.

He’s crawled across the dead assassin and is straddling Hannibal’s lap, claws extended and cradling Hannibal’s face. As Will’s legs wrap around his hips, Hannibal looks… surprised. The drying vermillion blood another match for his eyes, so many shades of red and brown, blood irises, and the spreading darkness of his pupils.

The Wendigo presses his claws in, and ten little rivulets of blood break free from the barrier of Hannibal’s skin. He allows it, completely still, absorbing the experience without passivity. The rich beads of red heed gravity’s call, and streak down his face in straight lines - as much as they can be on the Euclidian curves of that face.

It doesn’t take much predictive power to predict the trajectory of the blood tears. He lowers his face and uncurls his tongue to catch one, as he might a snowflake on a winter’s day, retracting his tongue without licking up the track of its passage. The muscle merely gathers the flavour and retreats, to savour it, to link the sensory input so the colour is permanently associated the taste and coppery smell.

Hannibal’s blood. Batman’s blood. The Dark Knight. The Arkham Ripper. Spreading on his tongue, interacting with him on a cellular level, sending electro-chemical signals to his brain, creating new synapses and laying down short-term memory, to be translated later into long-term memory, and from there a permanent part of him. 

He trails his claws down to the softer skin at Hannibal’s throat, resting lightly over the veins and arteries laced through the column of his neck. As still as he is, Hannibal manages to still further. Will feels a pointed gesture, sharp above his kidney. “It would be a shame to cut into your suit, so soon after its creation.”

Will shushes him soothingly, lightly increasing the pressure of his talons. He feels two of them puncture the surface and quietly groans as new trickles of blood escape their circular maze.

Another pointed gesture makes itself known, this time lower down, from underneath him, from Hannibal’s lap. Will bites his lip and sighs out with a kind of epiphany, starts to grind against the rising hardness below.

“Why, Dr Lecter, you’re enjoying this.” He purrs, claws trailing lower to where he can cut more freely. The shirt is the next casualty, shredded with a few precise motions, and then the claws travel lightly over the bare chest and the frosted hair curled there. With his right hand he pushed in, and cutting into the flesh of Hannibal's chest is like cutting into butter. Five thick lines of slow moving blood are left in the wake of his passage. He gazes down at them, transfixed, mesmerised by the welling of the vibrant fluid.

The knife over his kidney breaks through the skin of his suit, tip cold against his flesh, and Will pauses as his claws near the outer ring of a nipple. The scalpel applies only enough pressure to cut through the material, and once it has broken through it cuts across to one waist, where armoured pads are eschewed in favour of flexibility.

Lifting his left hand the Wendigo takes Hannibal’s lower lip between the thumb and index talon, and pinches, puncturing the lip and causing another blossom of red. He leans in to taste this too, and Hannibal keeps his lips still, lets Will sample, but slides a hand into the cut in Will’s suit, to stroke at the naked skin of his back. Will shivers, leans back in, and kisses Hannibal properly, tongue sliding in to meet the other’s warmth, slippery with blood and saliva.

The playful teasing gives way into grinding in earnest now, as Will’s own erection gains ground against the newly loosened fit of his freshly slashed costume. Hannibal’s hand trails lower inside Will's suit, cupping the bare globe of his ass, a delighted moan escaping into Will’s mouth as he discovers Will’s relative nudity.

“Fuck.” Will growls back, retracting his claws as his instincts have him digging his fingers into Hannibal’s back to gain purchase as he drags himself over and against him. “You said you had something to give me.” He adds, as sparks of pleasure build and join the other fires already lit within. He reaches behind and below him, lifting slightly so he can palm at the thick bulge in the material of Hannibal’s trousers. “Is this what you meant?”

Hannibal chuckles as their mouths clash again. “No, nothing so presumptuous.”

“Hmmm.” Will responds, sucking the iron-rich liquid from Hannibal’s lip, clamping him harder in the grip of his thighs. “Pity.”

“And were I sure it was truly you that wished such a gift, I would give it freely.”

This has Will pausing, still pressed against Hannibal, lips still hovering and air still exchanged. “Who else?”

“Who else, indeed, but the true instrument of chaos?”

Will begins to giggle. “Oh Bats.” He says. “You’re no fun.”  



	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is a bit of a fringe concept, so thanks to all of you who are still reading this, and especially to those who've left kudos and comments!

Will only fully came back to himself when he was alone in the Batcave’s changing room, staring down at the fresh costume in his hands that Hannibal had presented him with, as though each one didn’t cost more than a decade’s rent on his shitty apartment.

He dropped the new suit on the floor, hands coming up to tear off his mask and pull at his hair in profound and absolute mortification. _What. The. Actual. Fuck?_ This had gone too far. He pictured himself crawling over the assassin’s cooling body to drape himself over Hannibal, to cut him and lick at his blood; his very organs cringed at the image. His fists came down on his head, landing heavy blows that did little to ease the saturating shame.

He twisted around to critically examine the cut Hannibal made in his suit. The integrity of the material held well enough together that the fabric didn’t gape, he couldn’t even really see the slit above his kidney unless he bent over a little. Even so, it exposed a weakness in the suit and would render it useless as tactical equipment. A cool hundred thousand down the drain just so Hannibal could cop a feel… Will supposed he should feel incensed by that, or perhaps relieved the doctor’s response to being carved up by the Wendigo’s claws was relatively benign. Instead, heat gathered at the remembered press of lips and slide of tongues.

_Fuck._ How would he ever look Hannibal in the eye again? He forced himself to meet his own eyes in the mirror, and coloured as he found blood still smeared across his chin.

_Right. Time to admit defeat. Go home, grab Buster, get as far away from Gotham as possible._ The Wendigo thing had been worth a shot: stop fighting his nature and put it to some good use… but no, indulging that side of him apparently led to whole new realms of darkness. Warped sticky darknesses that made his own brand of vigilante justice seem vanilla in comparison.

He picked the new suit back up off the floor and left the changing room. He found Hannibal sitting at one of the chairs by the computer terminal, sporting a clean white shirt and dabbing at the punctures on his face and neck with antiseptic. Through the cotton of his shirt, Will could see a whiter square of bandage covering his pectoral muscles. He winced, remembering the resistance of Hannibal’s skin giving way to the slow drag of Will’s claws. The wince tapered out into a repressed shiver. 

“Um, thanks for the new suit, but, perhaps you have some trousers and a jumper I could borrow?”

“In abundance.” Hannibal disposed of the swab and led Will to the selection of civilian clothing kept below ground. “Make use of whatever you wish.” 

The clothes were a little too rangy in the limbs, wide in the shoulders. They were also too stylish, too expensive, and just generally too Hannibal. Earlier in the evening his infected mind might have enjoyed that, the idea of swathing himself in the other man, but the latest ‘episode’ left him startlingly sober. He wanted to go home and change that, preferably with a quart of cheap bourbon.

Selecting a black pair of slacks and a grey shirt, he rolled up the sleeves in a vain effort to feel more like himself. His reflection refused to cooperate. Despite the looser fit of the clothes on Will, they still managed to lift him out of poverty and place him in an unfamiliar station. It felt fraudulent, ridiculous, and – in that moment – still better than wearing the Wendigo costume.

It didn’t matter. None of it mattered anymore. Buster and he would hit the road. He could find somewhere remote, maybe a bit bigger, maybe get another dog. Hell, a couple more dogs, Buster sometimes looked a little lonely. _Yeah, ‘Buster’ gets lonely.  
_

He returned to the main part of the cave and let his eyes wander for a minute, taking in the actual space for the first time. Few enough people had ever actually seen this, and if this was to be his first and last time, he’d take a moment to soak it in. The foundations of the house carved high above him, thick arches built atop crags and pillars of stone, and the cavern itself stretched away into hollow echoing depths.

Standing by a door to the back of the cave, Hannibal cleared his throat. Eye contact was out of the question, but Will fought the urge to lower his head and tried to maintain enough self-respect to walk towards the cave’s exit with a straight spine.

“Where are your suits?” The smooth voice stretched further than usual in the strange acoustic dimensions of the cave.

“I… thank you, but I can’t accept them.”

The leonine head lifted a fraction and his eyes caught an artificial bar of light from above. “You have already accepted them.” 

Hands tightening into fists, Will put some steel into his voice. “I’m not ungrateful, but this was mistake.”

The eyes flashed, then lowered in a demure blink. Hannibal gestured at the door, “I see. Please, let’s at least get out of the chill.” This elevator stood two people comfortably, at least physically speaking; the atmosphere remained cold.

Hannibal, aloof but otherwise at ease, spoke into his watch. “Alfred, the threat has been neutralised, for now. I’m keeping the Batcave closed down and on high security, you need not concern yourself, I’ll tend to things. Please take the rest of the evening for your own pursuits.”

There was no audible response that Will could hear, and when the sensation of heightened gravity abated, the door slid aside to reveal a study. Closing behind them, Will noted the single picture hanging on an otherwise bare wall to be a disappointing secret entrance. On the adjoining wall, a sleek rectangle was cut into the wall, and with a brush of his fingers Hannibal brought it to life. A bio ethanol smart fire; Will had never installed one, but had read about them. A spark of professional curiosity nearly threatened to steal his resolve, but he checked himself. He needed to get out of here, opened his mouth to speak, but Hannibal stole the advantage.

“I’d like to know the nature of this mistake you feel you’ve made.” Having turned the fire on, Hannibal strolled to a liqueur cabinet, each room in the manor apparently coming fully equipped. Two glasses were produced, and a bottle of russet liquid, a bottle that far surpassed the Jim Beam he was planning on numbing himself with. 

_No. Nope. No. Time to get the hell out of here._

His hand crept to his abdomen, where the teeth of his smile pulled at his stitches. Hannibal placed a glass down on a low table at one end of a tidy green couch. A splash of gold pooled in the glass, and Hannibal abandoned it to move to the other end of the couch and pour himself a separate measure. On the otherwise empty table, the glass sat like an island, like a pariah. Lonely and bereft, cold without fingers wrapped around it, heavy with a burden he could relieve it of.

_Snap out of it Will, you’re not an alcoholic._

On the other hand, Hannibal maybe deserved an explanation; he’d sewn Will up, replaced his armour, and was apparently trying to be a friend. Yes, he could share his position and bid farewell like a grown-up. It was the right thing to do, the polite thing to do.

He walked over and rescued the drink.  


\- - -

Hannibal watched Will swoop in to claim the whisky and thought of pomegranate seeds.

Clearly incapable of relaxing enough to sit beside him on the couch, Will took his whiskey over to the eco-fire and began to inspect it with half of his attention, the other half of his attention smattering over Hannibal’s skin like a faint rain. Affecting an air of equanimity, Hannibal loosened his gaze to wander aimlessly around his study, as though lost in thought, allowing Will to compose whatever thoughts had him rearing to bolt.

Breaking a horse took patience as well as tenacity, a gentle touch as well as an unforgiving hold. ‘Breaking’ Will proved to be more complicated and intriguing than he had hoped, but also held the very real danger of _actually_ breaking him. Watching him lose himself to reckless whims and primal lusts had accelerated Hannibal’s synapses as much as his pulse. Despite the enticing picture he had painted, eyes dilated with arousal and lips parted enough to show the tips of his open teeth, Hannibal’s decision to cut through Will’s suit had been a necessary compromise.

With the sharp tips of claws sinking into his surface tissues and the Joker’s madness inflaming Will’s mind, perhaps it would have been smarter to cut further, into flesh and organs; certainly no one else would have received his leniency. Curiosity urged restraint and bid him stay his hand entirely, he was not yet ready to grievously wound this captivating creature, nor entirely sure that he ultimately wanted to.

While not gentlemanly to cut through the dark fabric and grope at the hot flesh beneath, this middle ground had been deemed necessary to mitigate the fall out. Will’s reaction to losing control so spectacularly would only be mollified if Hannibal had also appeared to lose himself to some extent. He could say, with 92% certainty, that this was why he had allowed himself to grip at the firm bare gluteus muscle, which had – he couldn’t deny - coincidentally attracted his attention on a few occasions in the past.

In Hannibal’s peripheral vision, Will took a slightly deeper breath and ceased his examination of the fireplace. “I don’t think it was a mistake to try, but I think it’s a mistake to continue. Knowing your limits is important, and…” He trailed off.

“And?”

“I think I’ve reached mine. I’m losing my sense of who I am.”

Hannibal found the statements encouraging, mostly couched as they were in thought and not as fact. “You think who and what you are remains static throughout your life?”

A tired hand scrubbed at the mop of dark curls. “No, no I guess not. But I don’t like the kind of crazy the Joker makes me. I’m going to do the smart thing and get out of Dodge.”

“Tell me Will, did you become the Wendigo because running away had served you well in the past?”

Will buried his gaze in the bottom of his glass, his frown he directed at Hannibal. “I don’t like it when you ask me questions you know the answers to.”

“Very well, allow me to rephrase. You became the Wendigo because running away from problems had not served you well in the past.” The scowl deepened on the young man’s face, but Hannibal persevered. “I imagine it was something of a personal breakthrough for you, accepting sides of yourself that the wider, blander, world could not. Taking ownership of your fate, pushing back at an unjust world.”

Shaking his head, subconsciously trying to deflect the words. “The Joker’s perspectives are realigning mine. It’s changing me, and I need to remove myself from the equation before things get out of hand. _More_ out of hand.”

The statements were becoming more definitive, the conversation moving in the wrong direction, time to change tack. “It is convenient that you can leave his influence at the city limits. Where will you go?”

Giving a shrug and voicing a redundant “I don’t know”, Will’s posture spoke to his frustration. “But I overestimated my ability to withstand other people’s crazy.”

“I see, so instead of staying in a place where you have a support structure and stability, you will take your _un_ stable psyche on a road trip, with no a plan or accountability.”

“No, it’s not… it won’t be like that. That’s how I find myself, centre myself.”

“The Joker is a man without a plan, an untethered madness that floats on the wind. If you cut loose, rejects order and structure, you will only become _more_ vulnerable to his whims. And your own.”

“I don’t know what kind of ‘support structure’ you think me and my 'unstable psyche' might have access to-”

Standing to cut through that line of isolationist thinking, Hannibal interrupted him, “The Price twins, or at least Jimmy Price, seemed quite fond of you. "Your neighbour down the stairs, and me, just off the top of my head. I’d be surprised if you didn’t have other people who have developed an affection for you.” He ambled to his desk and leant against it, trying to take the blunt the edge of the formal bearing that might appear threatening.

“People I put in danger when I’m spinning off into the Joker’s mind-set.”

Hannibal rolled the comment off his shoulders with a gentle flex of the muscles there. “I, for one, am not perturbed by a little danger. In fact, I can think of few people more adequately equipped to handle the symptoms of your current conflict. If you are worried about putting others at risk, you are welcome to convalesce here.”

“You’re seriously not concerned about the fact that I just left you with cuts that will probably scar for life?”

With a small scoff that bordered on dismissive, Hannibal waved it away. “Please, they don’t even require stitches.”

Something thrilling moved behind Will’s eyes, dark and possessive, and then it was gone. Will looked away and swallowed. “Good. That’s good.”

“I can give you quarters on the ground floor with direct access to the gardens so your dog can remain with you, and the manor is far away from the city limits that should your symptoms flare up and drive you to violence, it won’t hurt anyone innocent.”

“What about Alfred?”

“Alfred is more capable than you might think.”

Will put down his glass and began to pace. “This is madness.”

“On the contrary, this is good sense. I imagine receiving assistance is as hard or harder for you than receiving gifts. From my perspective though, madness would be leaving you to drive across the country with the Joker whispering in your ear and no other voice to contradict him but the one you doubt.”

“The one I doubt?”

“Your own voice, Will.”

If Will were to put any more pressure on his jaws his teeth might break. Hannibal waited a prudent moment to allow the pressure to ease in Will’s quaking vessel. Some of it released in the form of a question. “So, what you’re really saying, is that you don’t trust I can fight this by myself?”

Tame, as far as lashing out went. Hannibal suspected Will’s fits of anger would grow much sharper teeth over his metamorphosis, and he treated this question as though it had been delivered in a civil tone. “You might, in the same way that a person’s immune system might fight off an infection without antibiotics or a vaccine. But, why should you do it alone, if help is being offered?”

The edge of Hannibal’s oriental rug seemed to hold great fascination for Will, who stood with his shoulders slumped and hands still loosely coiled in fists. Hannibal couldn’t see his eyes, and couldn’t hear any emotion in his voice when he spoke. “I need to go home. I need to sleep.” Hannibal opened his mouth, but Will intercepted him. “I’ll think about it.”

Any further pushing would be counteractive, so Hannibal tilted a gracious nod. “I shall call you a car.”

\- - -

  
  


Bane studied the bloodied assassin kneeling before him. Disapproval was thick in his low voice. “This was not well done.”

The assassin, having delivered his report, remained silent. An inconclusive data search, three fatalities, and their presence revealed. One valuable piece of information: Batman was indeed now working with at least one other person.

Having killed the Head of the Demon, Hannibal had forsaken leadership of the League of Assassins. The resulting power vacuum provided the opportunity the Great Red Dragon had been waiting for, had always promised would come when he whispered in Bane’s ear and lent Bane his strength. Hannibal Lecter had been Ra’s al Ghul’s favoured pupil, and Bane had never learned the source of the conflict that led to their duel, nor why he had then rejected command of the League. That Hannibal would now content himself to lead others angered Bane, despite the opportunity his defection had created. The League of Assassins were a centuries old elite fighting force; did the Batman think he could do _better_?

The man before him, on his knees and awaiting Bane’s decision on whether his failure forfeited him his life, remained perfectly still. A credit to his training, a fine example of League’s calibre of warrior; he may have failed in his primary mission, but he had sacrificed his honour to run from the fight in order to bring his leader vital information, knowing it might be received with a blade. To die this way would restore his honour, but so too could Bane’s judgement.

The Red Dragon lay dormant, unconcerned by these human matters; what mattered was the work. If Batman threatened the work, then Batman must die. If the man before them still benefited the work, he could live. The information he had brought benefited the work. He could live.

Bane nodded and looked away from the assassin. “We know more than we knew before. See to your wound. Update the perimeter guard. I want you to map what you saw and brief the men for an assault tomorrow night. I’ll take us in.”

He would finish this, conclusively, and return to the work. The work called. He walked away from the man, mind once again filled with burrowing beneath the rot of Gotham.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a quieter chapter this one, but from here on out we're building towards the final climax!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a shorter chapter this week, I had more I wanted to include but I'm not happy with it yet, so next week's chapter might be slightly longer to compensate.

\- - -

  
Will hadn’t lied: he did think about Hannibal’s offer of submitting to his care. He thought, over and over, about what a terrible idea it would be.

He slept a fitful five hours, then packed up his flat, resolved. He dressed again in the clothes Hannibal had lent him, and shaved carefully. He needed a car. To get that, he needed to pawn something for cash. If he wanted good money, he would have to look like someone who might have acquired such a thing legally.

At one point, while the razor was cutting swathes through the white shaving foam, he caught his eyes in the mirror and froze. It was too easy, in that moment, to believe his eyes were more green than they had previously been, and that the razor bit a layer deeper, peeling back his skin, _revealing his true face_ … Will managed to shake the thought out of his head, giving himself only a small nick in the process. Buster had the uncertain tilt to his head reserved for when Will broke his habitual patterns; his head had been too much at that angle in recent weeks.

Writing the letter to Mrs B. was harder than he anticipated. The guilt at leaving without a proper goodbye weighed on him, but he just needed to get out of Gotham before he hurt an innocent. Into the envelope he dropped a half dozen small diamonds he’d taken from the vault of a corrupt politician – they were safe and untraceable. Mrs B might actually improve her life with them, which was more than Will was ever planning to do with his ill-gotten gains.

From that drawer he also drew a necklace of black pearls and gold filaments, a recent acquisition from a collector who was unlikely to notice the theft for some time. It should be safe to fence. The rest of the assets were scooped into a sports bag nestled in the larger backpack Will was packing into. Some clothes, tools, kitchen and bathroom equipment, dog paraphernalia, and a single hardback book made it into the bag. His fingers itched for his mask, but he had left it at Lecter Manor. He was better off without it.

Hefting the backpack and clipping the lead on Buster, Will paused for a last look around the compact space. The room had never seemed small to him, he’d grown up in places the same size or only slightly bigger, and there had been two of them then. Or, one and a half, anyway.

Buster seemed concerned as they approached their neighbour’s door. He knew what the backpack meant, and his dark little eyes shone with a question. Will winked and clicked his teeth at the terrier, and the white tip of his wagging tail flashed in the light from the narrow hall window.

He pushed the envelope under the door and led Buster out of the building.

  
Three hours later, in a weathered Ford Escort with that had probably been manufactured around the same time as Will, one man and his dog sat in traffic. It was not the liberating get away he had been hoping for; he was stuck on the Robert Kane Memorial bridge. That was the problem with living on the middle island; it took at least two bridges to get out of Gotham. The goddamned bridges. Of the course the oncoming flow of traffic moved freely, only the outward-bound lanes resembled a military blockade.

The car stank of old cigarettes, and the air outside was clogged with the smog of half a hundred idiots still idling their engines in the dense traffic. Having the windows open, even briefly, had chilled him quickly, and the cold clung to him.

Hannibal’s shirt, having served its purpose, was no longer necessary, and its presence irked him. He inched the car forward, put on the handbrake and pulled his bag from the back onto the passenger seat. Buster came to stand on the centre console to watch curiously and Will tsked him back into his bed in the foot-well. 

The blue Honda in front crept forward another yard. Will brought up the handbrake and rolled after it, then stopped them again. It was _agonising_. He just wanted to be out of Gotham. It was as if the city sensed his intent to flee and had closed its fist, clutching at him. He dragged one of his own shirts out of the bag, rummaged and found a t-shirt and a fleece. He tore off Hannibal’s soft grey shirt and looked down. Looking down was a mistake.

The livid lines of his healing wounds grinned playfully up at him. _Hello there. Hee hee!  
_

Will snapped his eyes up and dashed his gaze hopelessly around the narrow confines of the bridge. Not now, not now! He had to get out of here.

In the rear-view mirror the truck, the big eight wheeler that had been riding up his ass since the traffic congealed, loomed in closer. The city – the city was closing in on him. The walls of the car. His eyes, still on the mirror, refocused on his own irises, and found them stained with green.

_Why oh why, Wendy dear, are you just sitting around in a small metal box?  
_

“I’m getting out of here.”

_Hmm, haha, nope. You’re sitting still.  
_

“I just have to be patient.”

_Pah! Patience! Patience is the opiate of the uninitiated Wendy! You and I know better.  
_

“I’m not going to sit here talking to myself.”

Laughter fills the car, but it seems to push the closing walls away. Will stretches out his limbs. In a traffic jam like this, it would take a long time for the cops to reach them. It would be better, of course, if traffic on both sides of the bridge were blocked… 

He stretches again, enough to feel the pull of his stitches, and smiles widely. He rests his head back against the seat and takes a moment to picture it. He could get out, walk back to the eight wheeler and climb up to the cab. The man would panic and reach for his gun in the dash, maybe he’d reach in time, maybe he wouldn’t. Will would catch the gun as it was brought around and it would fire uselessly into the ceiling, he would break the mook's nose off the steering wheel, then Will could take his eyes. The eyes that he clearly wasn’t _using_ , else he would be able to _see_ that he was crowding too close. Then… then the real fun could begin. 

_Taking the revolver, walking to the middle partition, hoisting himself up, firing into the oncoming traffic, hitting the sides of cars, hitting tires, hitting people; cars crash. He doubles up with laughter as more cars crash into those cars, and the ripple effect concertinas back up the bridge, cars squealing to a halt, skidding and knocking together, clack clack clack. Dominoes falling.  
_

 _Splendid! Now he can focus on this side of the bridge. He turns back to find some fool levelling another handgun at him. He springs from the partition onto the bonnet of a car and runs over its roof toward the gun-nut, as_ _his eyes widen and his pistol shakes in his hands. He_ _kicks him in the head, jumps down with a hoot of laughter and stamps on the face a few times, but denies him the bullets he appears to worship. Bestows these instead, generously, on the stunned sardines in their tin cans, until they’re fleeing and screaming and falling and oh it’s a merry little stampede..._

_A horn blares.  
_

Will snapped his eyes open, gripping the steering wheel with taught tendons and straining knuckles. The truck driver was leaning on his horn, the blue Honda had gained some ground – a whole meter of free road had opened up in front of him.

Despite the cold, sweat prickled under Will’s bare arms as he put the car in gear and crawled forward. He needed to get off this bridge. His eyes tracked to the edge, the wall that precedes the long drop, reminding himself there was always one way off the bridge, if it looked like he might really be about to commit mass murder on the freeway. He put the handbrake on again and rested his head against the steering wheel. Buster whined and thumped his little tail against the edge of his bed.

“It’s alright Buster.” He intoned, trying to put some warmth into it.

_It certainly is! A road trip will be excellent fun. It’ll be like a buddy-cop movie, you can be the good cop, I’ll be the bad cop… or perhaps we could take turns? Hoo hoo hoo!  
_

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be fresh air, asphalt flying under tyres, refreshing and invigorating – not this claustrophobic cluster-fuck.

_No, no, no! What this scene needs, what would vastly improve this situation… would be an explosion…_

A rap on his window startled him. He jerked violently away and then looked around with horror at the manicured lawns, the gravel drive, and neatly stacked masonry of the mansion. Alfred stood at his window, mild confusion and concern infiltrating his usual indifferent air. 

Will rolled the window down, and Buster immediately came charging onto his lap to sniff at the fresh air. Alfred appeared surprised, but couldn’t supress a smile as Buster wriggled excitedly, and even reached out to be sniffed before scratching at Buster’s thick terrier neck.

“Who’s this then?” Alfred asked, as though speaking to a small child, and Buster’s tail slapped Will harder, catching the edge of one of the cuts below his ribs – one of the Joker’s ‘eyes’. Will realised he was still not wearing a shirt.

“Uh, this is Buster, Buster this is Alfred. Now gerrof.” Buster retreated to his bed obediently, but without any diminishment in his enthusiasm.

Alfred returned his attention to Will again. “Master Graham, are you quite well?”

“I don’t think I am, actually.”

Alfred stepped back and Will opened the door to get out, signalling Buster to stay put. The little dog shifted on his feet, visibly struggling to keep himself in check, but he stayed in the foot well. Will grabbed the fleece and pulled it over his head as he stepped from the car. 

He leaned back against the car door and pressed his hands over his eyes. Alfred waited patiently until Will felt ready to lower his hands again, looking around the grounds, frank amazement and exhaustion threaded together with a fine stitch of dread.

“I don’t remember driving here.”

The old man with his impeccable posture nodded warily. “You were non-responsive at the gate, but I buzzed you in regardless. You didn’t respond to me when I first reached you either.”

Will’s brows came together over the bridge of his nose. “How long have I been here?”

“Only a few minutes sir.” 

A horrifying thought crossed Will’s mind, and he began to circle his car, looking for any signs of damage. “What time is it?”

“A little passed one.” Alfred responded, consulting his watch.

How long would it have taken to get out of that traffic jam and get here? The ford already had a collection of grazes and dents, which he’d only provisionally checked over before buying the car. It was hard to tell for sure, but there didn’t seem to be any more since this morning, no _obvious_ signs of hit and run… Will had to hope he’d been lucky.

He had a hand over his mouth when he reached Alfred again, shaking his head and letting his terror shine from his eyes.

“This is bad. I- I need help.”

The butler looked pained. “Yes sir, I believe you do. But…” The pain gave way to distress, and he looked over his shoulder, at the door and then up at the windows of the manor beyond. He turned back to Will with an urgency that communicated his next words like a slap, “…are you sure it’s _his_ help that you need?”

Will flinched, his voice breaking on the other man’s name, “Alfred…” A great many things flashed through his head, not least of all sorrow for both men shuttered in this ancient pile of bricks, but Will shook his head. “I don’t know where else I could go, I don’t think I’m safe to be around.”

The pity that always soured Will’s interactions with people swam under the surface of Alfred’s poise, and he cleared his throat in that awkward English way. “Yes, well-” He paused, guilt flashing across his face, his next words coming out in a low hiss. “But do you know _what_ he is?”

Sighing, Will sagged back against the rust bucket that embodied his failed dreams of escape. “Aside from being a murderer and a cannibal? Lonely, I expect.”

It was the ‘cannibal’ part that had Alfred concerned, he was fairly sure, and the adjective he tagged onto the end was designed as a barb. He could understand the man's concern, even appreciate the well intentioned origins of his warning, but if Alfred knew more about Will, he would probably be advising people to stay away from him too.

Alfred’s already erect spine somehow grew straighter and he turned his face away to look over the lawns. Will followed his gaze to where the tops of headstones were just visible below a dip in the hill.

“I tried…” He began, decades of repressed emotion in the two words, and then he folded the sentiment away and repositioned the stiff upper lip characteristic of his countrymen. “Well. Welcome to Lecter Manor, I have prepared the Hudson suite for you. If you would care to leash your furry companion, I can show you both to your quarters.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the extra week's wait, I've no longer got a buffer and I think I'm gonna have to start updating this one fortnightly instead of weekly. 
> 
> By the way, if you’re in any way sceptical as to how useful a whip can be in a fight, I recommend watching Castlevania!

Buster whuffed and sniffled, interrupting Will’s shallow sleep. The heavy drowsiness poured out of him like water from a wrecked car being dredged from a lake. He licked his dry lips in preparation to call to his terrier, when an urgent knock sounded at the door. The direction of the knock confused him, and he remembered he was no longer at home.

“Will!” The door was pushed open and Hannibal stood framed in the doorway, a bundle in his arms. “Forgive my intrusion, the perimeter has been breached, there are intruders in the cave again. I’ve no doubt it’s the League.” He flicked on the overhead lights and tossed boots and clothing onto the bed, revealing another armoured mask in his hands, which he offered out to a blinking Will as he approached the bed. It was the Wendigo’s, but different. “Fox started manufacturing it, before you decided to quit. Your old one is still downstairs.” He paused, taking in the discordant reactions no doubt flashing across Will’s face. “Will you help me defend my home?”

 _Manipulative fuck._ Will sagged in his sheets. “Just… just give me a minute.”

“We don’t have long. Meet me in the study where we sat last night.”

Will wasn’t sure he would find his way back there, but arguing seemed impossible. He nodded, and Hannibal left him with a quick stride.

He dressed as quickly as he could, lucidity coming quickly now as his physiology processed his anticipation for the coming fight, but he eyed the new mask with mistrust. The jagged planes of its dark broken face shone dimly with the subsumed and reflected light of the chandelier above, the edges sharper than the previous mask, the shape of it more eldritch, the horns curved back and deadly. It was a thing of beauty, but it wasn’t _his_. It would have to do for now. He slid it over his head, and it fit into his armoured neck cowl with a satisfying click, more comfortable and secure than the old one, lighter, reassuringly tight without feeling claustrophobic, and he sighed. He didn’t want to get accustomed to luxury.

As if to mock the thought, he opened the door to find the Alfred waiting for him, the Wendigo’s whip in his hands.

“Hi.” He greeted, mirthlessly.

“Sir.” The valet’s eyes made a quick clinical inspection of him, “Dr Lecter has gone ahead, I’m to show you to another entrance.” He handed over the coiled weapon.

Will took it, tsked Buster back, and shut the door. “Lead the way.”

  
\- - -

Anger curled like burning edges of paper in Batman’s stomach. He had donned his armour, and filled his belt from the auxiliary store he kept for just such an occurrence, and stood watching the monitors with the stony reserve of a kiln. The black clad figures flitted from shadow to shadow, all bar one, which strolled forth with lazy arrogance.

This hulking figure made short work of the ladders between the tiers of the cave, and reaching the top platform, extended his arms and turned in a slow circle. “Batman.” He called, his voice loud and bass and mocking. “Don’t tell me you’re hiding?”

The panel slid open silently and admitted him into the dark enclave. He waited until it had closed behind him, then stepped forth into the light.

“Hello, Francis, forgive me for not rolling out the red carpet. Our reunion is long overdue, although I do find your approach to be… somewhat lacking in proper etiquette.” Hannibal enjoyed the glint of irritation shining out above the other’s mask. He cocked his head. “Or do you still prefer to be addressed as Bane?”

“That is my name.”

“I see. And are you the Head of the Demon now?”

“The Demon’s Head has fallen. You saw to that. I am something… _other_.”

“I killed Robertas al Ghul, it’s true. I imagined someone else would take up the mantle of the Demon, I admit I am surprised, how have you kept the League together, as something ‘other’?” He looked around at the figures at the periphery of the light. “Then again, your numbers seem somewhat reduced.”

A deep chuckle from the barrel-chested man, who unbuttoned his thick fleece coat to reveal bare skin beneath. “The Head of the Demon died with Ra’s.” _He hadn’t dared use Robertas’ diminutive name when he was alive, how bold he has grown since his death._ “Your defection split the League. There is a pretender to the Demon’s Head, she has taken those foolish enough to follow her. These are the true warriors, those who recognise the strength of the Dragon.”

 _‘She’. So, the Lady Murasaki lived. Interesting._ He filed the information away for later; focusing on more immediate concerns. “The Dragon?” He asked conversationally, a slight tilt to his head, politely providing the cue that Bane had been waiting for. He let the sheepskin coat fall from his shoulders and turned revealing a monstrous black and red tattoo, a dragon’s back grafted onto his own. It was reminiscent of Blake’s evocative watercolours, and had the connections sparking along Hannibal’s synapses.

“The Great Red Dragon.” Batman murmured, as Bane came round to face him again.

Heavy satisfaction in his voice, Bane agreed, “His time has come.” Then, squinting, taking a step forward, he demanded, “Do you _see_?”

“I see how magnificent you are.” Hannibal responded, with some honesty; his delusion was certainly stunning. “‘ _On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire?_ ’” _  
_

Bane rewarded him with a smile that showed in the folds at the edges of his eyes, the grin itself hidden behind the heavy metallic mask.

“The flames of Gotham will see him rise?” Hannibal hazarded.

“The lady Gotham is clothed in sin, I will see her clothed in sun.” The growl was no longer Bane, this must be his alter-ego. What a curious cocktail of psychoses dear Francis housed. They had held different ranks in the League, but memory told Lecter he’d always been a twitchy young man, serious, quick to take offence – leadership had certainly given him room to grow. Growth in a both a literal and figurative sense; he’d been thinner, wiry, now the muscles bunched under his skin as though the tissue strained to contain them.

The lack of reaction caused the creases at Bane’s eyes to deepen in thought. “You abandoned your duties, and came to lap at the wounds of this city. Your abdication provided a necessary confluence of events. Perhaps you recognised you did not have it in you to rule; perhaps you would make a useful lieutenant – if you can recognise the Dragon’s authority, as you recognise his form.”

“A lieutenant.” Hannibal repeated, musing on the word as though considering the possibility.

“You were an admirable lieutenant to Ra’s, until you ended him.”

“You do not fear I would do the same to you?”

“You could not.”

“Oh?”

“Ra’s corrupted the Demon’s Head, it is why you were able to kill him. But the Dragon’s strength increases daily, He cannot be stopped now.”

Hannibal spread his hands. “Then this is all… an inevitability?”

Bane inclined his head, as if to say ‘of course.’ “Do you accept?”

By now, the Wendigo should be in position, and certainly he had kept the man talking long enough. “It is a glorious and rather discomforting idea.”

Suspicion crept into Bane’s scrutiny. “You have no intention of joining me.”

“None whatsoever.”

Bane growled and his shoulders shifted in aggression. “Then I will give you to Him.”

With a toss of his arm, Batman flung out his batarangs at the assassins darting in from his right, hitting three of the five of them. The three slowed and dropped, the paralytic coating the projectiles fast acting when it got into the bloodstream. He heard a sharp crack and saw a tangle of shapes to his left, which Hannibal knew must be Will joining the fight. The two remaining assassins on his side reached him in tandem with a familiar fighting pattern. He fell into the fighting stance employed by the League, and traded blocks and blows, waiting for the right moment to switch tactics.

When he drew his knives, the assassins were quick to unsheathe their tantos, but Hannibal had learned different fighting styles since leaving their ranks, and after humouring them in their steps, switched mid-swipe to a different tune, and they fell to ribbons beneath his curved blades.

“Impressive,” Bane approached with the light step of his martial arts, “but I’m still going to break your spine and feed you to the Dragon.”

Eyes flashing with challenge and a hint of mockery, Hannibal dodged forwards to dance back out of reach, spinning low to cut in at his tendons. Bane stepped out of his way and returned seconds later to deliver a kick to Hannibal’s knee, which connected as Hannibal twisted away. He silenced the screams of his nerve endings and pushed himself backwards to redistribute his weight.

Beyond them, Will corralled his assassins with the whip, separating one of them out and releasing a vivid spray of red as he swept passed.

Hannibal’s next feint and foray had his wrist intercepted and caught in the vice of Bane’s fist. As the fist squeezed, Hannibal brought the other knife around, catching a line up Bane’s hand that did nothing to stop this wrist being snatched and quickly subjected to the same intense pressure. Batman grit his teeth, swung himself up by the other man’s grip to kick at his belly, his boots meeting an impervious wall of muscle, the grip tightening further so that Hannibal’s hands spasmed and the knives cluttered to the floor. A swipe of Bane’s feet, and the knives were kicked away.

Bane tugged Batman closer then tilted his head back and cracked it down so that the metal struts of his mask collided with Hannibal’s face. The mask spared Hannibal the broken nose, but he felt his brain strike his skull and blood pool in his mouth. The impact snapped him back, his body briefly incapacitated as pain shot through him.

He chuckled through the damage and ran his bloody tongue along his teeth to check their integrity. Bane dropped him to the ground and towered over him, reaching up to unfasten his mask and pull it off. He breathed heavily as his face was revealed, the improperly treated scar running from his lip to his nose was agitated from the confinement, and it twisted as Bane sneered down at him, revealing new teeth.

“Next time we’re in that position, I think I’ll eat your lips.”

“A fine entrée.” Hannibal ground out, as he gingerly gathered himself back into a crouch. Bane watched with amusement, allowing him to do so.

He risked a moment to check on Will, who appeared to be outpacing and outwitting the remaining assassins, they were agile, but they didn’t have the suit’s adhesive properties or the long reach of his whip.

Eyes flicking back to Bane’s hungry gaze, Hannibal licked his torn upper lip. “You prefer active counter-play to taking the initiative?”

“I’m curious I suppose. I once admired you, and these are your last moments.”

“Dragons play with their food?”

“Bats mindlessly chatter.”

Hannibal twisted and fired a current through his cape, snapping it taut, the sudden rigidity knocking Bane back. He stumbled, but kept to his feet, growling a low laugh as Batman released the current and rolled to snatch up one of the fallen blades. He lunged back in toward the other man and, following through with the momentum, pivoted and struck out at Bane’s hamstrings.

The larger man’s reactions and instincts had him shifting position, and the blade buried itself above his knee. His scarred lip curled up into a silent growl and he snatched Hannibal by the shoulder and smashed his face down onto the cave floor.

The internal padding of the mask protected him somewhat from the initial collision, but Bane adjusted his grip on Batman’s neck and proceeded to repeatedly dash his head against the ground until the mask cracked. Confusion bloomed with pain as the floor approached and receded in a sequence of shocks, and his brain flashed and skipped. Then the floor was dropping away, he was falling up, floating and oddly weightless.

\- - -

This one bastard assassin just wouldn’t die, Will could even believe it might be personal. The other four assassins had the decency to just bleed out, but this one held onto life with a stubborn persistence that had become grating. Perhaps this was the one who’s ear he had ripped the night before; it was difficult to tell with all that black fabric wrapped around his head.

Will carefully stepped over one of the man’s fallen comrades as they circled each other warily and strategized the next assault. Their cautious rotation brought the central area of the cavern into his line of sight, and he frowned as he took in the scene; Batman limp and bloody, the tattooed brute looming over him and using the floor as a blunt force instrument.

His whip lay on the floor to the left, he darted in that direction and the assassin near instantaneously moved to intercept him. Will switched to meet him, cutting up the diagonal and lunging low, as though going to head-but the man in the stomach, the man changed his posture to deflect the attack, and at the last moment Will straightened his spine and pushed up of the floor, catching the man under his chin with sharpened tips of his curved antlers, ripping through the jugular vein and carotid artery. The man tried to bury a knife in his back, but the suit’s armour turned the blade, and he fell, unavenged. 

Jumping back to retrieve his whip, blood ran down his face, dripping from the antlers, and he shook his head to clear the droplets and leapt towards the centre platform. He saw the tattooed man lift Batman by his neck and thigh, and raise him high over his head. _Oh shit._

The arms came down, one knee came up, Will’s whip snapped out, snagging the remaining leg. Will threw himself backwards, and Batman was thrown wide as the man was pulled off his feet. Not sparing a moment to check Hannibal’s condition – hopefully better than he would have been with a broken back – Will darted towards where the monster was shifting to reclaim his feet. Talons extended, the Wendigo leapt onto the broad back, plunging his claws between ribs, sinking his teeth into the throat and tearing it out, the beast howling beneath him. His own monster roared back in his chest, drowning out all other thoughts, noises, sensations, as salted copper filled his mouth and prey was brought down. 

The Wendigo retracted his claws and blood spread across the floor, pooling and reflecting the overhead lights. When the breathing beneath him gurgled and stilled, he waited an extra moment for the spurting wounds to slow to a calm ebb, and climbed from the dragon inked into the man’s back.

He blinked in the sudden silence. The floor was littered with bodies; twelve, including Hannibal’s, and he was the last man standing. The Joker didn’t believe Hannibal could die, and part of that same conviction stole the concern that he might have otherwise felt as he approached Batman’s battered body. Sure enough, he was alive, and even partially conscious. He blinked up at the ceiling, looking up at stalactites and the reinforced foundation of the house with the relaxed air of someone cloud watching. A singular crack, jagged and yellow and glaringly obvious, carved from eye to temple, showed the protective foam behind the reinforced armour of the mask.

Hannibal’s eyes managed to refocus on Will when he came into view, and a faint smile ghosted his lips. He crouched over, getting between Hannibal and the bright lights suspended above. “You know what day it is?”

His mouth moved without sound, and then, very quietly, “It’s the day you moved in.”

Will chuckled, “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“At least eleven. Never mind that. Three of them are only dosed, they will come around soon. We need them alive. To find. What they’re doing.”

“Okay,” Will patted Hannibal’s armoured shoulder. “I’ll make sure everyone’s secure. You just… take it easy.”

“You?” Batman’s mouth was hardly moving, but his eyes demanded a response.

“Me what? Am I okay? Yeah.” Will grinned wolfishly, the assassins’ blood drying sticky on his face. “One of them nicked me above the elbow.” He twisted his arm to show Hannibal. “Otherwise, I got away lightly.”

The lids closed on dark satisfied eyes, the breathing remained steady.

“Do you think he needs an MRI or something?”

Alfred had carefully removed the mask and cowl, and gazed down mournfully at the bruises that were already marshalling beneath the skin. Hannibal was slipping in and out of consciousness, eyes open and dazed, smiling ruefully up at the old man as he wrapped cold compresses around his head, before sliding closed again.

“We have a CT scanner in the back." At Will's look he added, "It becomes necessary when your ward’s hobbies include base jumping around the city and challenging gangs of armed thugs, alone.”

“Your ward?”

“I still think of him as such.”

“And you are, his guardian? Or his warden?”

“He is hardly my prisoner.”

“But you see yourself as responsible for mitigating his behaviour?”

“Master Graham, if you would like to discuss this further, perhaps it can wait for a restorative cup of tea in the kitchen; this is hardly an appropriate conversation at the patient’s bedside.”

“You’re scared of him.”

Alfred sighed. “If you could remove the rest of the suit, I’ll prepare a contrast dye and get the CAT scan ready.”

“Do you have training?”

“Some. The supercomputer does most of the work.” Alfred stalked off, impatient and clearly wishing to avoid further inquiries. Will looked down at Hannibal on the table. His eyes were open again and locked on Will, crinkling with amusement.

“You do like to tease him.” He whispered.

“How are you feeling?”

“Sore. The assassins?”

“Two captives in your holding cell, one of them cracked the arsenic before I could pull the tooth. Can you help me get your suit off? I can’t even see the joins in it.”

Hannibal processed this while his eyes wandered Will's face. “You look like a pagan god,” he murmured. His eyes closed, but his fingers twitched and his arm slowly moved to invisible sensors that released clasps, revealing the seams of the suit.

“Uh. Thanks.” Will blushed as he began to pull the different parts of the suit open. Below the cracking shell of his armour, Hannibal wore a thin garment that resembled long johns made of a synthetic black fabric that was unfamiliar to Will, even with his material science background. He piled up the gauntlets and vambraces, the greaves and cuisses, the breastplate… he paused, fingers hesitating over the groin armour, then plucked it free with as much indifference as he could muster. “Can you sit up a bit? If I help you? I still need to get your pauldrons and backplate.” Hannibal obliged, huffing a bit and shaking slightly, and Will felt a strange beat of protective affection as he supported the man’s weight and slid off the rear plackart.

Alfred returned with two syringes and proceeded to roll up the sleeves of the undergarment and inject them both into the blood vessels of one elbow. At Will’s curious gaze, he held each spent needle up and elucidated. “Dye. Anti-inflammatory.”

They stood behind a screen while the CT scan ran through its radiography slices, and watched the 3D image build up on the computer monitors. Alfred’s stance relaxed next to Will, which was enough to reassure him that the scans showed nothing too dire.

After administering some more painkillers, which had enough sedative properties to send the doctor to sleep, Alfred tucked a blanket around him and turned to Will with a wary expression. He fetched a towel and wet it under some warm water, passed it over. “I watched the recording of the fight. You saved his life.”

With a nod, Will finally reached up and removed his own mask so he could scrub at the blood which had dried in crusty lines that pinched at his skin when he emoted. Alfred looked vaguely relieved when Will glanced back at him, presumably looking more human again. He offered a grin that was hopefully the right side of feral, “How about that tea then?”  
  


\- - -

This time, when he enters the sewers, he comes prepared with a top hat, enhanced with the glittering tiara that his Wendy had gifted him. His boys tramp along around him, heavy footed and weighed down with various tools of, um, liberation.

Having been notified when the dragon man and his ninja flunkies left on their doomed Bat-quest, he instructed the drone to follow them and gathered his troops in high spirits. What had started as a simple mission to distract the Bat had evolved arms and legs and _teeth_.

As the saying goes, _the gods must be crazy_ , and whether or not he believes in them, they sure seem to favour him. Opportunity has come a-knocking, and with its help, he is going to blow the doors down.

One of his favourite clown minions gets cut down by one of the ninja-wannabies left behind to guard the dragon’s lair, but his deadly acrobats leap in and spin them around. He side steps the elaborate dance and carries on his merry way; normally he loves to watch his gymnastic executioners, but he’s on a mission to acquire coveted goods, and distractible as he may be, he also possesses a single minded focus for certain things. Namely, bats and explosives.

They enter the cavern with its excavations and scaffolds, and he flings his arms forward in a dramatic gesture. Bullets explode and ricochet, punching into guards and workers alike, pinging off scaffold poles and burying into stone. It takes approximately thirty seconds, and everyone on the lowest tier is dead or screaming out their injuries on the wooden boards, the others above have frozen mid-work. He nods at two of his guards, who climb onto the frame and put bullets into the noisy survivors.

When the last one is silenced, Joker reaches out behind him and clicking soundlessly with his gloved fingers. The handle of a megaphone is placed in his palm and he whisks it up to his face to crow into it, “Good evening, busy little ants. How long has it been since you saw daylight? The sun? Ring any bells?” He pauses, to let the walls be his backing singers. _Ells, ells, ells_. “Big bright light in the sky?” _Eye, eye, eye. _“Gets kinda hot in the summer? Well you don’t have to be ants anymore! But I can’t take care of you all. I’ve only got room to house, oh, say, half of you. So! If you’re quick enough and strong enough and _cheery_ enough, kill the person standing next to you, paint a big ol’ smile on your face with his blood, and come and join my gang. You’ll even get fed!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to **I_live_for_this** who helped me flesh out Ra's backstory; it's not exactly how we discussed, but your input had me thinking about a _possible_ sequel where I may explore Hannibal's backstory in the League and how it ties in with Robertas and Lady Murasaki, and for that she needs to still be alive


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for being late again... I can't promise I won't be late again in the future but I _am_ committed to finishing all my stories.

“How many kitchens does this mansion have?” Will demanded acerbically as he followed the valet into a grey-tiled room with polished walnut countertops and subdued lighting. 

“Three.” Alfred tone didn’t acknowledge Will’s contempt. “The master and I keep separate kitchens these days, and there’s a larger kitchen which used to cater for banquets. We don’t have so many of those, these days.”

“‘These days’ being since Hannibal’s parents’ deaths, or since you found out he’s eating people.”

Alfred stalked off to snatch up the kettle and hold it under running water, something in his manner suggesting he’d like to subject Will to the same treatment. After a moment of frosty silence while the kettle filled, he clapped the lid closed and placed it on the stove. “We come from different sub-cultures, you and I.” He lit the gas. “While Americans admire the direct approach; the society I grew up in considered its overuse boorish, lazy, and rude.” He turned to meet Will’s eyes, his own framed with lines of censure. “With that said, I believe we must meet half-way, so let me speak plainly. You seem wholly unperturbed by Batman, and his diet, which can only make me wonder what sort of man you are. You did just save his life, for which I am grateful, and he seems to genuinely value your company, a rare honour – but I struggle to divine your intentions. I have met you a few times now, and each time you seem, to me, a different man.”

“You’re a few different men yourself, Alfred. You’ve been fiercely loyal to Hannibal for a long time, but you speak about him, sometimes, with horror and revulsion. And fear. But fear for your safety isn’t what keeps you here. So what is it? Are you afraid of what he would become without your mitigating influence? Or do you believe he is your ‘fault’, that you must carry a burden of guilt that he doesn’t feel?”

Alfred’s eyes narrowed, another moment of silence billowed out around them to join the steam from the heating water. The kettle whistled and the valet diverted his attention to preparing tea, some tension dissipating in the distraction this provided.

“Milk? Sugar? Lemon?”

“How do you take yours?”

“Lemon.”

“I’ll defer to your tastes.” 

Alfred inclined his head, a small acknowledgement that suggested their bridges might not be all the way on fire just yet. He motioned to the large wooden table to one side of the kitchen, and carried their cups to the surface. Will took a seat across from him, and waited for Alfred to speak.

“There’s some truth to everything you said. But you missed out an important component. I raised him, so yes, I do feel some blame. But… I _raised_ him, and so help me – in my own way – I love that boy.”

“Yes,” Will said softly, “I know you do.” Mercy kept him from repeating the ‘in your own way’, a qualifying phrase that had no place near a declaration of love. 

Again, pity stirred in his chest, for both parties. It was clear that Alfred had never been able to talk about this, any of this, and Will felt justified as he placed pressure on the wound. “You think you could have done something differently? Taken or avoided some action and changed what he is?”

Dropping his hands into his lap, Alfred’s eyes wandered the kitchen as though it represented a panorama of his history with Hannibal. “Every day.” He rubbed at his chin, where a silver five o’clock shadow was growing. “Even as I acknowledge that some things were beyond my control. There was nothing I could have done about that night, the night his parents were killed, the night he and his sister were taken. I insisted the police involve me in the investigation, argued my military background proved I could take orders. But it was _days_ before we found them, and we were too late. Mischa was already... we were too late.”

Taking a sip of tea, Will let the man wrangle his emotions back under control. “And Hannibal?”

Alfred’s voice was husky, “When we found the house, he was on his own. Sitting in a corner. Covered in dried blood. He’d been kidnapped, his parents shot. He watched his sister murdered and-” Alfred paused, editing some part of the story. “Well. He’d killed everyone in the house, and then sat there on his own, for at least a day. We don’t think he even tried to leave. He just…” Alfred looked down at his cup. “Sod the tea. How about a real drink?” 

Standing up from the table with the alacrity of a thirty year old, he went rummaging in a walk-in cupboard. He produced a bottle of… rum. Will’s eyebrows rose, he wasn’t expecting that. 

Noting his surprise, Alfred explained, “I had an Indian comrade in the military who loved the stuff. I drink it with nostalgia from time to time.”

Procuring two glass tumblers, he set them down on the table and poured them each a measure, before reclaiming his seat. “I know I didn’t make him what he is. But he’s the only child I’ll ever have. I saw so much of myself in him, and when I realised what… what he was doing. I…” Alfred had been staring at his glass ravenously, and now he drank it in its entirety. “I couldn’t reconcile it. I still can’t. He feels things so deeply. And yet he feels nothing for those he kills. Nothing. And…” He poured himself another drink. “He _eats_ them.” The man gave a full body shudder, and Will wondered if he had ever said the words aloud before. “I understand why, I think, it’s the trauma, it has to be. But… he’s immoveable on it.”

“They ate Mischa?” Will guessed, and Alfred’s eyes snapped up. He nodded. Will took a sip of his rum. “Before all this,” he gestured down at his body, indicating a costume that he’d already changed out of, “I was a cop. I learned pretty quick there’s good and bad, but mostly there’s morally grey. I learnt I was the latter. I also discovered that, as a cop, I had no choices. Sometimes I was working with bad guys, for bad guys. So, I’m still grey, but I go after the bad guys, try to save the good ones, and the other grey’s don’t get my intervention. I nearly left Hannibal to die. But somehow I went back for him.” 

_Of course we did,_ the Joker tittered in the back of Will’s head. Alfred was leaning forward, listening intently, trying to parse the words for something – anything – that might bring some comfort. The vulnerability in his expression had Will shoving the Joker back down. He finished his rum, and Alfred topped them both up before prompting him again. 

“Why? If you knew what he was?”

“At the time I wasn’t sure why.” He still wasn’t. The Joker’s influence had crept around him quickly while he watched from the vents in Funland. Even without the eye contact, hearing him talk, his thoughts arcing like lighting across a Faraday cage, as captivating as the naked flame that holds your eyes until they dry and sting in your sockets…

 _Lock that down Will Graham,_ the Wendigo, still fresh from his kills, snarled in the back of his head. _The old man asked the why of it._

“I profiled Batman... before I approached him. I’d figured out his civilian identity, I knew why he chose his victims, and what he did with them, the bare bones of his motivations. Meeting him though, I realised my profile barely scratched the surface. I saved him because he’s an extreme of both, terrible and… marvellous. But at the end of the day, all that balances out.” Will shrugged. “You probably had a lot to do with counterbalancing the scales.”

Alfred’s eyes glistened. “It is… interesting to hear another’s perspective on the matter.” He wiped his eyes. 

“Although-” Will hazarded. 

The valet’s eyes sharpened. “Please go on.”

“Would it really kill you to just warm up towards him a bit? Y’know, call him by his actual name, once in a while?”

“Ah.” Alfred nodded. “So you weren’t just being facetious that day.”

“No, _Major_ Pennyworth. You must be aware that formal names indicate a measure of distance?”

The weary eyes dropped to the table, heavy with guilt as much as fatigue. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.” His fingers, hoary and a little swollen at the knuckles, fidgeted with the edge of a coaster. “At first it was to keep _some_ semblance of normality in his life. I was his guardian, but I couldn’t just step into the role of a father. I admit, I was frightened by what he’d done, killing those men, but I also understood it, admired it a little, I think. He didn’t speak for many months after we found him, and that made it hard to get close. But, oh, he always had this tragic little smile, when I checked in on him. So sweet you wouldn’t believe. It tore at my heart.” He gave a heavy sigh. “But it wasn’t until fifteen years later, that he broke my heart completely. He’d been my ward longer than he hadn’t, by that point. I found out how he was… processing his trauma.” The rum travelled to his lips again. “And, yes, knowing what I know, I find I need to maintain a little distance.”

“What happened when you found out?”

“At first? I had to help him dispose of the… evidence. Then I tried to talk him out of doing it again. He was in his last year of his residency. I tiptoed around him until he completed, and then tried to dissuade him more ardently. It only drove him away. I became caretaker of this place, instead of his valet and guardian, while he... joined some…” Alfred waved his hands in the air, “… _cult_ , in the far East.” His head shook sadly.

Rotating his glass on the table, Will tilted his head encouragingly. “But he came back.”

“Yes,” Alfred sighed, pouring out more liquor, “more determined than ever.” He rested a bony elbow on the table. “You indicated you find him morally grey. I suppose I fear he’s amoral, and only follows a code to afford himself the vanity of thinking himself civilised, superior to those he kills.”

Will whistled. “Now _that_ , was direct.”

“Oh that’s why we’re drinking rum, isn’t it?” Alfred snapped irritably. “So that I can take off the damned British muzzle.” 

This elicited a chuckle from Will – one of his own, not the Joker’s. He thought Alfred could benefit from some more regular exposure to alcohol.  
  


\- - -

_Clang. Clang.  
_

Hannibal stirred from his sleep, head throbbing, stomach turning queasy loops. He risked opening an eye, recognised the grated ceiling of the medical bay in the back of the cave, and let darkness wash over him again. 

_Clang, clang, in the darkness. Clang, clang, in his dreams.  
_

_Clang. Clang.  
_

The headache had abated a little, the nausea a low rumble of discontent in his guts. He opened his eyes in a quick recon, an inverse blink, and found the lights a touch less abrasive. He drew measured breaths, repackaging the pain into a secure container and tucking it away, and made a second attempt to open his eyes. This time, they were met with a pair of upside-down blue eyes, looming over him and blocking out the light behind. They peered at him curiously. 

_Clang. Clang.  
_

“Bet you’re glad you didn’t lock me in the elevator this time.” Will was leaning down from behind his head, breath stirring his hair.

Despite the arid conditions of his mouth, Hannibal managed to croak out, “Your presence is always appreciated.” Truth be told, the last moments of the fight were difficult to recall. His last lucid memory was of becoming intimately acquainted with the cavern floor. 

_Clang. Clang.  
_

Will sighed and rubbed at the wrinkle forming between his brows. “You know, I always thought ninjas were supposed to be quiet.”

Ah. The prisoners. One of them must be banging against the pipe in the cell. Well, perhaps the operation of the pipe might discourage such discourtesy. “Spray them with water.” Hannibal suggested, eyes closing again. The pain container was proving to be less airtight than he could have wished for. 

Will’s scent intensified, Hannibal felt the proximity of his warmth, followed by a long intake of breath. Hannibal cracked an eyelid quizzically, seeing only curls. “Did you just… smell me?”

_Clang. Clang.  
_

“Difficult to avoid.” Will murmured back, eyes moving back into view. No further justification was forthcoming; he continued to stare consideringly into the back of Hannibal’s skull.

 _Clang. Clang.  
_ The organ pumping in his chest began to squeeze a little harder, a little faster. There was no communication in this gaze, it seemed entirely contemplative, and yet the fixed stare stretched between moments to form an unparalleled intimacy. 

_Clang. Clang.  
_

Could he fall upwards, disappear into those eyes? Pain seeped in from somewhere, a different calibre to that leaching from the box in his mind. An ache in his chest, where the organ was beating faster; nausea of the soul, which juddered reproachfully under unfamiliar pressure. 

He believed himself to be above staring competitions – primarily because he always won them – but he found himself wishing to look away and incapable of admitting to the defeat. The discomfort must have shown in his eyes, would be hard to miss from this distance, because the edges of Will’s eyes crinkled in a smile and his face lifted away. Hannibal blinked at the lights a few times, waiting for his pupils to contract, for the unwelcome feeling to subside. 

A shuffle behind him and Will moved around the hospital bed to pick up his chart. 

“What are you looking for?” Hannibal queried. 

“Nothing really. Just being nosey. AB+ huh? Trust you to have the fanciest, least altruistic blood type.”

“It’s true, I don’t believe in altruism. That is to say, I believe it exists in some people, but I don’t support it as a philosophy.”

“You must be feeling better.” Will murmured at the clipboard, before snapping it shut and looking up at him with a sly smile.

A fresh prickle of unease ran around the circumference of Hannibal’s brain, landing in his ears, which seemed out of sorts and reaching for some noise. “Our prisoners have gone quiet.” Hannibal realised out loud, pushing himself into a sitting position. 

“Small mercies.” Will acknowledged, dropping the clipboard back onto its hook. Then, “Should you be doing that?”

Hannibal closed the IV line with the slide clamp and pulled it from his catheter. “You put them in the same cell?”

“Yeah.” 

Hannibal hummed, swung his feet off the bed, and waited for the crowd of black dots to clear the field. Once his blood pressure had stabilised, he ratcheted it up another notch to stand. This time, the black dots swarmed with a vengeance, wiping his view of the room, consciousness tap-dancing on quicksand. Whether or not he would have remained standing unaided became moot as Will’s solid presence appeared and took Hannibal’s arm about his shoulders.

“Alright then,” he singsonged chirpily, “let’s go visit your ninja buddies.”

\- - -

Wearing Hannibal like a lopsided feather boa, with an aging socialite still attached on one end, Will walked them to the main part of the cave.

He paused when he caught sight of the cell. “Well, maybe not ‘buddies’, after all.”

A fine spray of wet crimson had ribboned out through the bars, but most of the blood was still inside the cell, if not inside the ninja it belonged to. The body lay face down in a pool of red, and calmly sitting on the bunk, the remaining ninja regarded them calmly.

“Banging getting on your nerves too, was it?” Will asked conversationally.

“He was going to kill you.” The voice sounded hoarse. He threw a small razor through the bars, aiming it squarely at their feet. It stuck point first into the floor. “With that.”

Beside him, Hannibal seemed to be getting better at standing and taking more of his own weight. Will supressed a smile, realising he intended to maintain contact nevertheless. 

“And this ran counter to your preferences?” Hannibal asked, once he had assumed a more commanding stance.

The man reached up and unwrapped the zukin from around his head, revealing a narrow face and short brown hair. He stared at Hannibal with eyes that didn’t blink, a vague dreamy expression on his face. “I remember you, from before. I was a kid, fresh to the League, but you were meant to lead us. I know how it works. You killed R’as. You killed Bane. You can’t deny your authority now.”

“Actually.” Hannibal replied with dispassion. “I didn’t kill him. Will here did.”

The blue eyes flashed to meet Will’s, and a wide smile carved onto his face, something unsettling in the way his lips parted and stayed that way as he sized him up, head listing to one side. 

“Then, I’ll swear my allegiance to you.”

“Your… allegiance?” Will repeated, distastefully. “You know nothing about me.”

The man surged to his feet and approached the bars, gracefully side-stepping the blood growing tacky on the floor. “You killed Bane, and survived with hardly a scratch, which means you’re faster and smarter than he was. I don’t know how to lead, I’m trained to follow.” His shoulders indicated a shrug. “Think I’ll follow you.”

“Right.” Will blinked. “Uh, no thanks.”

The light never left the man’s eyes, his smile curling into a tighter expression of amusement that suggested Will may have little say in the matter. 

“Will, if I may?” Hannibal tugged him slightly, and Will sighed and helped him shuffle out of earshot from the prisoner. 

“We do still need to find the League’s base of operations. We must find and neutralise whatever threat lingers despite Bane’s demise.” 

“So, what, you want me to take on a pet assassin? Or pretend to? No way!” 

“Far be it for me to foist responsibility upon you, or to ask you to lie, but perhaps you could request your acolyte demonstrate his loyalty before you reach your decision?”

Will scoffed and slid out from under Hannibal’s arm, letting him prop himself up with the aid of an equipment locker. “Very slippery of you Hannibal." He turned on his heel and marched back to the cell.  
  


“‘Matthew Brown.’ Reckon that’s his real name?” The cave-side door of the elevator still stuck slightly, but the biometrics and lift mechanism worked fine. Gravity asserted itself as they climbed through the mansion.

“It’s not much better than John Smith, is it? Children rescued from the black market were weaned off heroine and initiated into the League. He may not even remember his real name.”

“Well that’s bleak.” Will muttered, chewing on his thumb. 

“Food, clean water, shelter, fair treatment, education, purpose. More than many receive.” 

“Stolen from their homes, sold into slavery, recruited into a secret army? Sounds like a joy-fest.” 

Hannibal tilted his head in agreement and led the way from the elevator into his dressing room. “The League took a very literal interpretation of Utilitarianism, but from the subtext of their teachings they considered their own actions altruistic. The perpetrators of a purge were never intended to survive it, and they believed they carried the burden of sin to purge the guilty, so that others could remain clean.”

Thinking back to his conversation with Alfred and disliking the parallels, he let his eyes wonder the expansive collection of shirts and suits, then trailed after Hannibal into the bedroom. The billionaire climbed gingerly onto his bed and lay down on the covers, a crack in his façade briefly revealing his exhaustion. 

“Tonight, we must put our trust in your new disciple. So for now I think I should recoup my strength. Can you find your way back to your rooms from here?” 

Will felt a small tug at the corner of his lips. “Actually.” He tapped his chin with exaggerated concern. “I’m not sure that I can. I might get hopelessly and irrevocably lost.”

With a sigh that was probably intended to suggest something about the dwindling reserves of his patience, Hannibal shot Will a look of annoyance, quickly spoiled by the smothering of a smile. 

“I can call Alfred to collect you if you are frightened of losing yourself in the labyrinthine halls of my mansion?”

Affecting a casual slouch, Will approached the empty side of the bed. “Don’t wanna disturb the old man. He had a late night. This bed’s big enough to hold the whole Moscow ballet company. Sure you won’t even notice me napping over here.” 

Hannibal grunted noncommittally. “As long as you refrain from using me as a scratching post.”

Holding Hannibal’s eye as he slid out of his shirt and trousers, he climbed beneath the sheets in boxers and smiled at the darkening pupils. “You didn’t seem to mind too much last time.”

“I wasn’t recovering from head trauma last time.”

Signalling his true intentions with a wide yawn, Will closed his eyes and pulled the covers up to his chin. He rubbed his face into a plump pillow, then peeked out of one eyelid at his put-upon host. Hannibal’s gaze was the fond side of exasperated, and catching Will’s spying eye he huffed a laugh and got under the covers himself.   
  
They might as well have been in separate beds when they fell asleep, but by the time evening had corroded the daylight from the blinds, Will was pressed against Hannibal’s back, an arm thrown across his ribs. He blinked awake with a glossy pool of dribble below one lip, forehead and bridge of his nose pressed against the back of Hannibal’s neck.

Cooling saliva aside, it wasn’t a terrible way to come to consciousness. Despite Alfred’s sponge bath, Hannibal smelled real, of salt and blood; some of it must still be lingering in his hair. The breathing beneath his forearm was steady, but this close to Hannibal’s arteries, Will could feel a pulse racing, and his own was only beginning to approach its pace.

From where Will’s head lay, he could see the delicate shell of Hannibal’s ear resting on the sleek brown hair. Was it the cannibal in him that wanted to bite that coy crescent of flesh?

“Am I correct in thinking you’ve woken?” Hannibal’s voice was barely a whisper, carried more via Will’s forehead than his ears. 

“How are you feeling?”

“A little better.”

“Better enough to be Batman?”

There was a faint, uncharacteristic, strain in his voice, “I should think so.”

Will lifted his head, breathing out through his nose to disturb the fine hairs on Hannibal’s nape. A warm flush of satisfaction saturated him as Hannibal shivered in response. It took considerable restraint not to pull Hannibal closer and bite possessively into his shoulder. 

Growing hard was an effective incentive for not grabbing at his gracious host, but on the heels of this thought was an overwhelming curiosity over whether or not his proximity was affecting the other man to the same degree. 

Before he could pursue this intriguing thought, Hannibal rolled to face him. If he was physically affected, none of it showed in his face; there was no suggestion, no flirtation or humour. Neither was there warning or chastisement, merely a level gaze that measured without asking questions. Time dilated, as it had in the medical bay, and when he eventually blinked, it was echoed in the other. This time, Will found himself retreating first.

“Don’t we have a city to save, or something?”

Hannibal quirked his lips and curtailed his languid scrutiny. “I think I have an appointment with the shower first.”

“Ah, well, as long as you have your priorities straight.”

Without his ninja zukin, Matthew looked less a ninja and more a stealthy street predator. Will suspected it might have something to do with the unnatural smile that was permanently shifting about his mouth, which the head-wrap would have concealed.

Much like the Batcave, albeit possessed of a more mellifluous odour, the sewers were not the ideal environment for his van der Waals suit; adhesion was reduced on surfaces that were damp or dusty. Climbing down the rungs to another level in the subterranean network, the Wendigo tried to subdue the feeling of foreboding zipping up and down his spine. 

When he was clear of the ladder, Batman dropped through the hole like a torpedo, flaring his cape to soften the landing. He turned from the rungs to face Will, and met his eye. “Show off,” Will murmured. 

“Shall we?” Hannibal responded brightly, as though he hadn’t heard. 

There was a low chuckle from beside them; Matt, watching, eyes shining with the torchlight from the Batsuit. “Demons, dragons and bats. What’s leading the League now?”

Will rolled his eyes. “I’m not leading the League.”

This was met with an amused hum, “Agree to disagree. What are you, then? Antlered and clawed like that?”

“A wendigo.”

“What’s that?”

“Evil spirit.” 

“Demons, dragons and evil spirits. You’re the odd one out, ‘Bat’man. A little too mundane to lead League, perhaps?”

Will cocked an eyebrow at the young man. “You do realise he’s higher in the pecking order than you are.”

Matthew shrugged. “Until I give you my oath, I’m not in your ranks. Hierarchy’s on hold.”

Glancing at Hannibal, he saw the other man was supremely unruffled by the young man’s impudence, still watching Will with something like affection. “As amusing as all this is, we should probably proceed with some degree of stealth.” 

“Less chatter?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.” 

“Shorter sentences might help.” 

“Touché.” 

They continued along unchallenged, and their guide grew increasingly nervous. “There should have been sentinels here,” he whispered, “and we should hear the labourers by now.”

“The labourers?” Will growled.

“The workforce we recruited.”

“Recruited?” 

“Yeah.” Another shrug in the low light. “More or less.”

“Any of them cops?”

Matthew looked confused and shook his head. “I don’t think so. Mostly the homeless.”

Will looked away to see Batman turn a corner ahead of them. His posture changed subtly, displeasure making itself known in the stiffening of his spine. Will and Matthew approached the corner, which led out onto a broad platform looking across an open space to a tall scaffold. 

Across the scaffold, big letters made of bodies tied in contorted shapes spelled ‘HI BATS’, underlined with a pile of messy corpses. Will turned to gage Matthew’s reaction, the assassin’s mouth was slightly ajar, wheels turning in his eyes as he took it all in. 

“Who-?”

“The clown.” Hannibal answered before he could finish. 

Matthew stayed silent a moment then nodded with resignation. “He knew you’d beat Bane, he came as soon as we left.”

“He set Bane on us?”

“Said you knew our plans. Obviously he lied, if you needed me to find this place.”

“So why do all this?” Will asked guardedly. “Aside from the… ‘fun’ of it, of course.”

Matthew looked up at the tops of the structure and his eyes went cold. “There was a quarter kiloton of TNT up there.”

Will followed his gaze and swallowed. “Was?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everybody welcome Matthew. Be nice to him, he might not last very long! Mwahahaha.


End file.
